Caitlin Dickerson | The Atlantic

I Recognize the Look on Liam Ramos’s Face

2026-03-10T09:00:00-04:00

When the first photo of 5-year-old Liam Ramos went viral in January, it became an instant symbol of the Trump administration’s mass-deportation campaign: his blue bunny hat, his Spider-Man backpack, his hunched shoulders, his scared eyes as ICE detained him and his father outside their home in a Minneapolis suburb.

The second photo of Liam, a week later, enraged people who were now invested in his story: Lying on his father’s lap at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, about 70 miles south of San Antonio, Texas, he looked pale and lethargic. His eyes were open a tiny slit. His mother told reporters that Liam had a fever, was vomiting, and refused to eat.

What struck me about the second image, and his mother’s update, was how familiar his transformation was. I’ve visited Dilley several times, and have seen many children go from bright-eyed to listless.

With his move to Dilley, Liam became part of an ongoing national experiment in detaining immigrant families. George W. Bush’s administration briefly used the practice to provide respite to asylum seekers who had just crossed the border and had no plans for where to go next. But ICE officials soon argued that family detention should be used as a deterrent. In a former medium-security prison surrounded by razor wire north of Austin, young children and their parents wore jumpsuits and were confined to cells for up to 12 hours a day; it closed in 2009 after lawsuits and government inspections showed that children there were sick and malnourished.

The Obama administration eventually opened Dilley on a remote patch of Texas flatland where temperatures can hit 90 degrees even in December. Its open-air layout of trailers was supposed to be more humane. But for years now, in interviews and court filings, families have described an emotionally crushing atmosphere, with revolting food, foul water, and a dangerous lack of medical care. They say bright bedroom lights that never turn off make it almost impossible to sleep, compounding their misery.

[J. Weston Phippen: Is it an immigration detention facility or a child-care center?]

In 2016, a government advisory panel recommended that ICE end the practice of family detention, and instead use monitoring programs that allow people with pending asylum cases to settle and work in the United States. But under Donald Trump, the agency has twice backtracked on plans to do that, arguing that housing children at Dilley is safe and necessary in order to discourage border crossings. Even that rationale, though, no longer adequately describes Dilley’s role. Instead of detaining recent border crossers almost exclusively, Dilley is now also housing families that had established lives in the United States and were arrested in ICE sweeps.

When I toured Dilley in the fall of 2019 with a group of reporters, ICE’s acting director, Matt Albence, led us across the 54-acre campus, which could detain up to 2,400 people. Albence, who now works for the private prison company GEO Group, said he was proud of how Dilley was run and pushed back against its critics. “This is clearly not a concentration camp,” he said.

On the tour, I learned that when families arrived, they entered a small locked chamber called a sallyport, where they were screened for communicable diseases. Most had just finished an exhausting journey across the southern border, and were given a 15-minute “cool-down period” in an air-conditioned area that looked like a school administrator’s office, with tile floors and faux-wood laminate cubicles. After a snack, they started a 12-hour intake process that involved a full physical, a shower, fingerprinting, a rules orientation, and an initial asylum screening called a “credible-fear interview.” Girls older than 10 were given a pregnancy test. Then they were assigned to a dorm room in one of Dilley’s five “neighborhoods,” which were labeled by color and animal, and given name tags that indicated their preferred language.

A sign at reception—Recreation just for YOU!—said that karaoke, Hula-Hoops, and air hockey were available every day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. “Just let a recreation staff member know what you want to do!” To minimize the risk of sexual harassment and assault, only mothers or fathers could be detained in the facility at a given time. (Posters for how to report sexual assault were everywhere.) This meant that two-parent families were separated: One parent was sent to a separate adult detention center, sometimes in another state.

Each of Dilley’s 20 housing trailers had space for 120 people. The detainees slept in rooms that could accommodate up to six families in double bunk beds. In one room, I saw a teenage girl slumped forward on a couch, holding her head in one hand, staring blankly at the wall in front of her. Former ICE officials who were involved with the facility’s planning later told me that the government had deemed individual bathrooms an unnecessary expense. Instead, communal ones were placed at the end of each trailer, a long walk from the farthest bedrooms.

We toured an austere courtroom that reeked of bleach, and an airless cafeteria with a rancid smell. There were amenities, such as a “salon” that offered free haircuts and a computer lab with a few children clicking away under a poster that translated E pluribus unum into English and Spanish. We were told that Dilley offered Zumba classes a few times a week. We visited a day care with space for 15 children, which parents could use in two-hour increments; the sole attendant was trying to soothe three crying babies.

The few parents and children I saw outdoors looked sedated by the heat. Some huddled near skinny trees. The government had paid for landscaping, but the plants immediately died in the brutal climate, according to Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior adviser at ICE.

[Eric Schlosser: ‘We voted for retribution’]

Throughout the tour, we heard coughing and saw faces covered in snot. Parents said they waited hours in the heat and rain outside the medical unit, only to be sent away with Tylenol, ibuprofen, or nothing at all.

On another trip to Dilley about a month later, I met a Mexican mother named Patricia who told me that her teenage daughter was refusing to eat and had tried to commit suicide a week earlier. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone,” Patricia said. A Honduran mother named Cindy told me that her 8-year-old son, Jostin, had become unrecognizable since they arrived. “He acts like a small child,” she said. “He speaks in a whisper, constantly asking for Mommy.” Jostin wasn’t eating either, she explained, and “everytime he goes into the cafeteria, he throws up.”

Later, I interviewed a mother and son named Kenia and Michael after they were released from Dilley. Michael, who was 11, started having violent meltdowns in the facility—something that had never happened before—and they continued for months afterward. Detained children experience more stress than their bodies can handle, child-welfare experts told me, and are profoundly destabilized by seeing their parents’ fear and helplessness.

The advisory panel convened at the end of the Obama administration was supposed to recommend improvements to family detention, but instead voted unanimously to end it. “Detention is never in the best interest of children,” the panel’s report said.

When Trump took office in 2017, his administration disregarded the recommendation. President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security finally closed Dilley in the summer of 2024. Trump reopened it a few months later, as part of a $45 billion expansion of the immigration detention system that has also involved Guantánamo Bay, tent cities on military bases, and converted warehouses.

CoreCivic, the private prison company that operates Dilley, reported that its management revenue from ICE more than doubled between the fourth quarters of 2024 and 2025—partly because of reopening Dilley. In an earnings call last year, CoreCivic’s then-CEO called this “truly one of the most exciting periods” in his 32-year career with the company.

The trailers at Dilley are now rusted from floods, and well past their intended lifespan. ICE created a barrier between some of the trailers so that the facility can house mothers and fathers at the same time. This year, its population has fluctuated between 900 and 1,400, including pregnant women and children as young as two months old, according to Faisal Al-Juburi, a co-CEO of Raices, whose lawyers provide free counsel to families there. Like Liam Ramos, whose family came from Ecuador in 2024 and requested asylum, some detainees have pending applications for legal immigration status. And some were picked up at their court appearances or at appointments at ICE offices.

It’s become harder to learn what’s happening inside Dilley in recent months, though reports suggest that conditions are worsening. ICE is no longer offering tours to journalists. After ProPublica published pictures and letters written by detained children, guards reportedly started confiscating crayons and paper. In 911 logs, ProPublica found reports of “toddlers having trouble breathing, a pregnant woman who passed out and an elementary-school-aged girl having seizures. Local authorities were also called in for three cases of alleged sexual assault between detainees.”

Democratic Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas went to Dilley on February 20 and reported that families were “locked up like criminals and being treated like animals,” and that some children had untreated asthma and appendicitis. Castro has long opposed family detention and criticized Trump’s immigration policies. “There’s a lot of little, little kids who really probably don’t know how to process this experience,” he said in a video posted on YouTube.

[Caitlin Dickerson: An American catastrophe]

Lawyers at the National Center for Youth Law are allowed to perform periodic inspections of Dilley and interview detainees, under a 1997 federal court settlement that set minimum standards for the detention of children and families. Becky Wolozin, a lawyer at NCYL, told me that since the facility reopened under Trump, she and her colleagues have interviewed detained children with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, severe autism, and other serious developmental illnesses. There was a measles outbreak earlier this year. Wolozin said that basic childhood illnesses such as ear infections can become dangerous in Dilley because children are often sleep-deprived and malnourished. “Kids have fevers for a frightening amount of time, and persistent coughs and headaches,” she said. “We’re seeing that only after many, many visits to the medical wing, or even to the hospital, do they actually get treated with antibiotics.”

In January, an 18-month-old detainee got sick at Dilley with COVID, RSV, pneumonia, and bronchitis and had to be hospitalized for severe respiratory distress, according to a federal lawsuit. ICE then returned her to Dilley, where her lawyers say the medical staff withheld her prescribed medication until the lawyers secured her release. In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said that the child received “proper treatment,” including her prescribed medications, and that all detainees “receive timely and appropriate medical care from the moment they enter ICE custody.”

Todd Brian, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, said in a statement that the company doesn’t “cut corners on care, staff or training, which meets, and in many cases exceeds, our government partners’ standards.” He said that detainees receive three nutritious meals a day and have access to a team of “registered nurses, licensed vocational nurses, nurse practitioners, and board‑certified physicians, including pediatric specialists.” Brian said that any allegation that buildings were not being maintained was “patently false,” adding, “Emergency medical services are activated immediately when a child’s clinical presentation exceeds what can be safely managed on-site.”

The Trump administration is fighting restrictions on its use of Dilley—including a 20-day limit on detaining children and families under the 1997 court settlement—by arguing that existing laws are sufficient to keep the children there safe. Al-Juburi told me that the average stay is currently about 63 days, and that one family was detained at Dilley for almost five months. Raices has gotten some clients released through habeas corpus petitions; Liam Ramos was freed through the same maneuver within days of the Dilley photo going viral. But Al-Juburi said the petitions are time-consuming and must be made one at a time, even though the same legal logic applies to many of the children there.

In recent court filings, ICE has called Dilley a “model of regulatory compliance and humane care.” DHS said in its statement that children at Dilley “have access to teachers, classrooms, and curriculum booklets for math, reading, and spelling,” as well as “3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries,” all of which is “generously funded by the U.S. taxpayer.” The statement says that detention “is a choice” and encourages families to self-deport.

I recently spoke with a subcontractor who quit working at Dilley this year; he requested anonymity so that he wouldn’t lose his security clearance. He said that since he’s been out of a job, he’s been stressed about money because he has a toddler at home and his partner is pregnant with a second child. But he told me that seeing Liam Ramos and so many other sick and miserable children—the constant crying and vomiting—got to be too much.

“A lot of these kids have bags under their eyes, which is something that you don’t see with kids,” he said. “They have worse bags than their parents.”

‘America Doesn’t Want My Children or Grandchildren’

2026-03-03T07:00:00-05:00

Photographs by Natalie Keyssar

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The Cruz family was exhausted. It was two days before Christmas 2024, and Rachel was coughing from bronchitis, her body once again crashing into the holiday break as she finished her 17th year teaching public high school in New York City. Irvi, her husband, was sleeping after his day shift at an upscale bistro on the Upper West Side, which had followed an overnight shift at a Latin dance club farther uptown, in Inwood. Between the two jobs, he’d dropped their daughters—Sara, 12, and Ana, 10—at their schools for gifted students, then rushed home to the Bronx to cook and do laundry.

For years, Rachel and Irvi had been hustling to make this routine work, hoping that American immigration policy would evolve and allow Irvi, who had spent half his life in the United States, to become a citizen. Raising two children in New York City was expensive. Each day felt like a marathon they didn’t think they could finish. But the girls were thriving, and Rachel and Irvi were beloved at work. Every few years, they met with lawyers who urged them to hang on, so they did.

I met the Cruz family in late 2016, when Donald Trump’s election, and his contempt for immigrants, first made them think of moving to Irvi’s hometown, in rural southern Mexico. But their daughters were just 2 and 4 then, and uprooting them was daunting. Four years later, Joe Biden’s win made the Trump years seem like an aberration, and Rachel and Irvi thought, once again, that a solution to their problem was within reach. Then came 2024, when 77.3 million Americans voted for Trump. His campaign signs had called for MASS DEPORTATION NOW! To the Cruzes, the message was clear: Irvi should give up and go home.

The family had never been apart for long. The four of them linked arms or held hands when they walked down the street together, without seeming to notice they were doing it. Separation was not an option. So they would go, all of them.

“We no longer have the faith that things will always be better here in the United States,” Rachel told me that night in December, sitting at their dining table, cupping a Zabar’s mug full of tea.

[From the September 2022 issue: Caitlin Dickerson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning story about the secret history of family separation]

Drained from work, Irvi shuffled down the stairs in sweatpants. He had dark bags under his eyes but greeted me with his squinty smile. He sat down and said he was excited to live freely for the first time in his adult life. He was also scared. The only story he’d known about his family—that they were proud New Yorkers—was about to end. Sara, who had been standing behind him, playing with his salt-and-pepper hair, ran into the kitchen to cry. Rachel hurried after her.

“What do you want?” Rachel asked softly. “Do you want to give Papá a hug?”

“No, I just want to go to my room,” Sara said. “I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to be here.”

“Well, if we get it out now, maybe it’ll make you feel better later,” Rachel told her, unsure if that was true.

Their tentative plan was to sell the house and move in with Irvi’s parents, 2,100 miles away. Irvi would go first, so he’d be out of the country before Trump took office. Rachel and the girls would join him seven months later, in August 2025, after finishing the school year and summer camp. They didn’t know what they’d do for income in Mexico, or where the girls—who knew only a little Spanish—would go to school.

Natalie Keyssar for The Atlantic

Sara packs up her New York life in July 2025.

Friends thought they were overreacting. Some were upset. After all, New York was a sanctuary city and Irvi was married to an American citizen. Rachel and Irvi found these reactions maddening. They saw their American friends as stubbornly naive about the system they had been battling for decades, and their undocumented friends as deluded for clinging to hope instead of reason.

Rachel’s mother, Susan McCormick, had heaved and sobbed when she learned that the granddaughters she was helping to raise would be leaving New York. She and Rachel’s father, Doug, were furious with the country for putting them in this situation. Their daughter was one of nearly 4.2 million American citizens and permanent residents in the United States with an undocumented spouse, and Sara and Ana were among 6.3 million children with an undocumented parent. How many were also choosing family over country? And what was the United States losing in the process?

By Christmas 2024, the McCormicks were trying to be stoic, to give Rachel and Irvi strength and to show the girls that everything was going to be okay. Doug had become a genealogy nerd in retirement and was reminding himself that their ancestors had made a move like this every few centuries: Irish farmers running from famine, Germans displaced by war, and Russian and Ukrainian Jews escaping pogroms. He even found ancestors aboard the Mayflower.

But all of these prior generations had found refuge here. “After 400 years in this country,” Doug told me, “suddenly America doesn’t want my children and grandchildren.”

Rachel, Irvi, and their daughters would be the first in their family to run from—rather than to—the United States.

Jeff Samaniego

The Cruz family in 2018

On September 11, 2001, Irvi was 19 years old and had recently arrived in upstate New York. He was working on a construction crew, remodeling a Chinese restaurant, when the Spanish music on the radio was interrupted by grave English he didn’t understand. Terrorists had flown jets into the World Trade Center. George W. Bush’s administration would soon abandon negotiations to grant legal status to undocumented Mexicans and instead create the Department of Homeland Security, with a mission to deport them.

But on September 12, Irvi’s employer still wanted him to come to work as if nothing had happened. It was the kind of mixed message that would characterize his life in the United States. After a few more years of construction work, he felt homesick and returned to Mexico. But as soon as he touched down there, he felt he’d made a mistake. He had grown up in a one-room house without running water, dreaming of riding a motorcycle—a luxury that he could never afford if he stayed. He started making plans to go back to New York right away.

Irvi’s parents, Lulu and Martín, were leery of his decision. Both were the children of peasant farmers and had grown up in homes made of adobe and sticks. But they never thought of joining the more than 8 million Mexicans who’d moved north, starting with their parents’ generation and the U.S. government’s Bracero Program for temporary workers. American farmers got hooked on cheap labor and, after the program ended in 1964, continued to recruit Mexican workers, who now had to cross the border illegally.

[Read: The disturbing history of the Bracero Program]

Lulu, a street vendor, was afraid that discouraging Irvi would backfire. Martín, a bus driver on Mexico’s dusty rural highways, couldn’t hold back. “That country will eat you,” he said of the United States. “Of course, here it’s more work and less money, but you get used to it.”

When Irvi told them he was going back, his parents knew they might never see him again. Martín thought to himself: I don’t have a son anymore.

With his 16-year-old cousin, Irvi tried to sneak back across the border somewhere in Arizona. They got lost in the desert, and Border Patrol agents found them. Irvi’s cousin started crying, and one of the agents gave them water, peanuts, and cookies. “Don’t worry; you’re safe now,” the agent said in Spanish. “Tomorrow you can try again, and maybe you’ll make it.” After a few attempts, they were successful.

Back in upstate New York, Irvi returned to working in construction. He was determined to learn English, so he immersed himself in American music and television, especially Chappelle’s Show.

Around that time, Rachel, who grew up in a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia, graduated from Vassar. She had studied abroad in Mexico and taken a class with the geographer Joseph Nevins, who gave lectures about the American government’s complicity in a system that exploits immigrants for their labor but denies them the dignity of legal residency.

She and Irvi met on a sunny afternoon in 2006 while they were watching an outdoor soccer game in Poughkeepsie. She was hobbling around on crutches because of a sprained ankle, and he jumped up to help her. Rachel was swept away by Irvi’s sweetness and exuberance. Irvi loved Rachel’s intelligence and empathy. They talked about everything—their different upbringings, their jobs, their roommate drama. Soon he was visiting her on the weekends in Philadelphia, where she had gotten a job. On one trip, a police officer stopped him, saw that he was undocumented, and let him off with a warning. To avoid the risk of driving for visits, Irvi moved in.

Around 2009, they went to see the first of many lawyers, who said that Irvi wasn’t eligible to apply for legal status, even if he married Rachel, because he had gone back and forth across the border after living for more than a year in the United States. The only work-around was for him to spend 10 years in Mexico and then apply for a waiver. But a Democratic Congress, with Barack Obama in the White House, appeared to be on the precipice of passing immigration reform.

Eventually, Rachel got a teaching job in New York, and they found an apartment in Harlem. Irvi started busing tables at the bistro on the Upper West Side, while Rachel taught overcrowded classrooms of low-income students. Despite the pressure and burnout, she felt like she was offering kids a chance at the American dream. No matter where you come from, she believed, if you land in a public school, and if you get a teacher like me, you can make it. On their third anniversary, Irvi proposed in a rowboat in Central Park.

Sara was born in 2012, Ana in 2014. Irvi was their full-time caretaker, toting them by subway to museums, the aquarium, the zoo, and story time at the public libraries. On weekends, he squeezed in five shifts as a busboy. He and Rachel made enough money to cover the essentials, and Rachel’s parents helped with child care, but they went years without paying for a haircut or buying new clothes. They sometimes fought when they were tired and felt like they hadn’t seen each other in weeks, or when Irvi’s spontaneity clashed with Rachel’s need for order. But they could never stare each other down for long without cracking a smile.

Irvi’s unresolved immigration status trailed them, usually from a distance. ICE agents once entered their apartment building looking for a neighbor; Rachel stood guard at the peephole while Irvi hid in the bedroom. A few years later, Irvi borrowed his in-laws’ car to take the girls to Coney Island. As they approached the park, he spotted a police checkpoint at the entrance. He pulled over and had a panic attack, then tried to play it off by telling the girls that the car was breaking down.

Rachel and Irvi talked about what to do if ICE ever tried to arrest him while she was at work. Irvi would have to persuade the officers to wait long enough for Susan and Doug to pick up the girls. “You have to fight to make sure that our kids are safe,” Rachel told him.

For years, Congress debated changes to the immigration system, including ones that would have helped Irvi. When Sara was old enough, she joined Rachel at protests with a sign that said Don’t deport my dad. As part of a campaign called Dream Across America, Rachel rode a bus to Washington, D.C., where members of Congress admitted to activists that they hadn’t known that so many mixed-status families were in limbo.

Rachel was stunned by Trump’s first election, but Irvi had expected it. Up to this point, Sara and Ana had only a vague understanding that their father was different from them, but they began to realize that he was in danger. Ana lost interest in playing with other children and asked her parents why the president hated her. She had nightmares and panic attacks, and had to see a therapist. Irvi distracted her and Sara with bedtime stories about Eddie Spaghetti, a caricature of himself, who fought battles against dragons and monsters inspired by rude customers at his restaurant.

As they did their best to block out national politics, their community embraced them. Rachel’s students nominated her for a Big Apple Award, which recognizes the best teachers in the city, and she became the head of the department at her school that teaches English as a new language. Ana and Sara became fixtures in their school plays and joined a children’s choir that rehearsed at Riverside Church. At the bistro, Irvi was promoted to server and then manager. He took night shifts at the club in Inwood, and began bringing home more money than Rachel—enough to buy the motorcycle he had dreamed of.

They borrowed against Rachel’s retirement savings for a down payment on a bright-blue townhouse in the Bronx’s Little Italy. The house was far from a subway stop but had a spacious front porch that looked out onto a maple tree. The plumbing didn’t work and some rooms had no windows; Irvi paid his construction-worker friends to help him fix it up. The family turned hiding their home’s flaws into a giant art project, creating a mural out of postcards to cover up cracked walls and ornamenting the crooked old stairs with starburst wallpaper. Their American dream may have been spackled together with glue and construction paper, but it held.

Rachel was standing in the front yard with a rake in her hand when their next-door neighbor Cookie ran out and announced that the 2020 election had been called for Joe Biden. Rachel felt something new: optimism. She and Irvi daydreamed about finishing the basement and redoing the kitchen. They started to believe they would grow old together there.

During the summer of 2024, Biden announced a program, Keeping Families Together, that would finally allow people like Irvi to become citizens through their American spouse. Rachel holed up in their home office one Sunday with the application, attaching hundreds of documents that illustrated the life they had built together. She paid the government’s $580 fee and clicked “Submit.”

“It looks like Irvi might finally be getting legal protection,” she texted me at the time.

The next day, a federal judge put the program on hold after 16 Republican-led states sued. A few months later, Trump was reelected and the court terminated the program. Because of the application that Rachel had filed for Irvi, the incoming administration knew exactly who, and where, he was.

In January 2025, after the holiday break, Rachel stayed up late watching TV interviews with survivors of the Los Angeles wildfires. She found comfort in hearing people say that even though their home was gone, they still had their family, and that’s all that mattered. The girls picked 10 family activities to do before Irvi left the United States. Sara wanted to go ice skating in Central Park. Ana requested a day at the American Dream mall in New Jersey, which has a ski slope and a water park. They found discount tickets for Hairspray, Gypsy, and Annie.

On Irvi’s last day in New York, January 13, 2025, the whole family piled into the car for school drop-offs. Trump was planning to end a policy that made schools off-limits for immigration raids, so Rachel was carrying a trifold poster board explaining what to do in an encounter with ICE. Sara was finishing a homework assignment about the writers of the Declaration of Independence. “Let’s say, all of a sudden, you’re reading a story in English, and it’s about a dad, and all of a sudden you’re feeling really sad,” Rachel asked. “Do you have an adult that you can talk to?”

“Yes,” the girls said in unison.

Irvi bopped his head to La Mega, the Spanish-language radio station that he and the girls listened to each morning. For more than two decades, he had tried to be perfect—perfect at work, perfect in his marriage, perfect as a father and neighbor, as if playing a game that he could eventually win. He told me he had slipped, once, 22 years ago, when he was briefly charged with a misdemeanor for carrying a small amount of cocaine—a onetime mistake in his early 20s. Though the charge was dropped, and doesn’t even come up in a background check, Irvi said he didn’t want to hide anymore, in any respect. But honesty and character didn’t seem to matter to the incoming president, who was conflating all unauthorized immigrants with the people he called “illegal monsters”—the small number who had committed heinous crimes.

“That’s not what I’ve been working for,” Irvi said. “That’s not what I deserve.”

Irvi made a final visit to a Bronx bodega that served as a hangout for Mexican immigrants. He would go there when he felt homesick, or when he was tired of speaking English. His friends tried again to talk him out of leaving. Save more money first, they said, or talk to a lawyer—as if Irvi hadn’t been talking to lawyers for years. He left angry but arrived home sad, knowing he might never see those friends again.

He tucked the girls in that night and waited for Doug, Rachel’s father, to arrive. Around 3 a.m., the two men, along with Mango the cat, climbed into an SUV that Irvi had bought on Facebook Marketplace and then crammed with their belongings.

The three-day drive was smooth until they arrived at a gas station in South Texas that was swarming with Border Patrol agents. Irvi started panicking, and his face went gray. They stopped briefly at a family friend’s house, where they had planned to stay the night, but Irvi’s nervous system was telling him to get out of the country now. By Inauguration Day, he was in his hometown of San Lorenzo Cacaotepec. His parents had spent 20 years scraping together money to rebuild their house out of concrete and add a second structure—which meant there was now room for Irvi, his sister, and their families.

Irvi rose in the dark each morning and drove along a rocky dirt road to a small plot of land that his mother had inherited. There were no blaring car horns or subway trains roaring underground. Just birdsong and rustling leaves. Irvi was enchanted and unnerved by Oaxaca’s clear blue skies, unmarred by skyscrapers. He spent hours hunched over outside each day, digging in his family’s land, pruning and picking, and breaking a sweat as soon as the sun came up. Along with relatives, he planted tomatoes, peppers, and onions, and sold them at outdoor markets. He barely broke even. His father had been right—in Mexico, you work more for less—and Irvi was struggling to adapt. He had been able to get anywhere in New York City without a map, but in Oaxaca he felt lost. “I have to start over again,” he told me. “It’s like I wasted all that time in New York now that I’m here. Everything I learned doesn’t apply.”

Natalie Keyssar for The Atlantic

Irvi harvests peppers in Oaxaca in November 2025.

He could not stand to watch the videos, flooding his phone, of armed ICE agents smashing car windows and wrestling fathers to the ground while their crying children watched from the back seat. The plan that he and Rachel had formulated all those years ago—for him to connect the girls with their grandparents before ICE could detain him—would never have worked. He would have been overpowered and dragged away. He hadn’t been in control then, he realized, and didn’t feel in control now.

It didn’t help that his relatives worried that Rachel and the girls might never join him. They couldn’t believe that U.S. citizens would trade the privileges of their home country just to be with Irvi. A cousin told him: “You’re going to have to find a new wife.”

Rachel never thought of abandoning Irvi—not since the rowboat in Central Park. But she often felt guilty that he had to bear the psychological burden of their relationship. Now she thought it was her turn to sacrifice to keep the family together.

Without Irvi to pick the girls up from school with homemade sandwiches, Sara and Ana learned to ride the subway, texting him regular updates in the family’s group chat. As their friends studied for entrance exams to the city’s competitive middle and high schools, Sara refused to talk about her feelings and retreated into her phone. Ana’s nightmares returned. She was valedictorian of her fifth-grade homeroom class and teared up during her speech when she mentioned Irvi, who was watching over FaceTime.

Once school let out for the summer—and as ICE agents stormed immigration courthouses downtown—Rachel and the girls took apart their New York lives. The postcards and pictures came down, revealing the cracked walls underneath. Rachel became engrossed in Facebook videos of other moms who were documenting their families’ self-deportation process and describing their relief to be out of the United States.

Sara had a final sleepover with friends. Two of them took her phone into a closet to record a message for her to listen to in Mexico. “You’re an amazing friend,” they said. “We’re gonna miss you so much.”

Rachel bought a trailer for the last of their belongings. Her co-workers threw her a surprise party. The goodbyes “were more like See you laters,” Rachel said. “They’re not the same goodbyes as Irvi’s.” Her assistant principal told me that replacing a teacher of her skill level would take years.

Rachel found a private school in Oaxaca for the girls and secured a job for herself, at an annual salary of $10,700—not nearly enough to live on, even in rural Mexico, and a pittance compared with her $120,000 salary in New York. They had accepted an offer on their house in the spring, but the deal still hadn’t closed by July. Rachel couldn’t afford the bills without Irvi’s income, and her debts were mounting. She told the girls they were leaving August 1, with or without the house money.

Rachel’s father still couldn’t believe it had come to this. “I’m heartbroken because I believe in this country in an almost religious way,” Doug told me. But as a country, he said, “we fucked up.”

Natalie Keyssar for The Atlantic

Rachel, Ana, and Pinto the dog take a break from packing in July 2025.

Rachel and the girls—plus Coleslaw the cat and Pinto the dog—had planned to stop at tourist attractions to say goodbye to the United States. But Rachel was so frustrated and anxious by the time they left that they stopped only to sleep. She sped to the border, her adrenaline pumping.

Irvi flew to northern Mexico to finish the two-day drive with them. Rachel spent the first night at his parents’ house wide awake and in tears. She told Irvi she felt like she couldn’t breathe. They reminded themselves that if Oaxaca didn’t work out, they could try Mexico City. Or they could apply for visas to move to Spain or Canada.

As Doug had told them, “The whole world is open to you now, except for your home country.”

Ana, now 11, put up a few Broadway posters in her new bedroom. Sara, now 13, hung birthday cards from friends in New York. They stuck their favorite New Yorker covers on the walls.

When I arrived to visit them in early November, three months into their reunion, Irvi was still going to the farm before sunrise, and Rachel and the girls would leave home at 6 a.m. for the bumpy ride to school, which involved driving through a creek to reach a paved road. Ana said the hardest part about the move was leaving her New York friends, because it had taken her many years to make them. She made one friend at her new school whose family had moved from Canada that year; they sat together at lunch, talking about what it was like to start over somewhere new. Meanwhile, Sara sauntered across campus in a swarm of girls, who delighted in practicing their English skills on her. Though the school was technically bilingual, their teachers mostly spoke Spanish. In class, both girls’ eyes glazed over. They looked lost.

Sara and Ana did their best to hide their discomfort in front of Irvi. “I try to say to myself that I’m not the only one and I should be calm about this,” Ana told me, “because people have done it before and I’m pretty sure they’ve turned out fine.” Plus, she said, “I will have a great college essay.”

But sometimes their anguish spilled out. They were used to excelling in school, and now they felt like they weren’t learning anything. One night, when Sara was struggling with homework, she lashed out at her parents, yelling exactly what Irvi had been afraid to hear: “I didn’t choose to move here!” She ran up to her room. Irvi stayed on the living-room couch. They cried, separately.

Outside those emotional swells, the family was relieved to be together, and free of the dread that had hung over them in New York. They relished the meals that Irvi’s mother, Lulu, prepared for them: rich and tangy beef, chicken-and-vegetable stew, fluffy corn cakes piled with salsa and beans. With all of their children and grandchildren at home, she and Martín now felt that they could live out their lives in peace.

Sara and Ana told me they felt safer in Mexico. Rachel agreed, but worried about the friends and family they’d left behind. She thought they were too close to see what the United States was becoming.

Rachel taught English at her new school, mostly through songs. She had free time for the first time in her adult life, but felt bored. When their house in the Bronx finally sold, she bought a few luxuries to make their new home more comfortable: a refrigerator, an oven, and a washing machine, so they wouldn’t have to scrub their clothes on the concrete washboard Irvi’s mom used. They paid off their debts, and had surprisingly little money left over, even with Rachel tutoring children of wealthy Mexican families on weekends and after school.

They felt lucky to have had the freedom to immigrate to Mexico; no relatives in the United States relied on their care, and the sale of the Bronx townhouse funded the move. But it was still unclear how they would support themselves now that they were here. Rachel tried to be patient as Irvi figured out a plan. He had worked for so many years in the United States without a break, and he was clearly depressed. He knew he had to sell his motorcycle. He spent all day on the farm streaming Hot 97, an English-language radio station in New York. At night, he would scroll the social-media feed of the nightclub where he’d worked, telling Rachel which artists had performed and who had gotten into fights, until she snapped. “I don’t care,” she said, pleading with him to leave New York in the past.

They tried to distract themselves with excursions on the weekends, but every time they got in the car, Irvi would either go quiet or unravel, then beat himself up for days. Rachel was frustrated that he couldn’t let them have a good time, until she realized that the only travel Irvi had ever done had been unpredictable and dangerous. He didn’t know how to enjoy a trip with his family, because he’d never had the chance.

“I’m trying to be positive,” Irvi told me, but he felt like a disappointment. He began to pull away from the girls. He seemed to miss the United States more as time went on, not less. In Oaxaca, another American family invited them over to celebrate their first Thanksgiving in Mexico. He took one bite of stuffing and burst into tears. But that same month, he saw on Instagram that ICE had raided his bodega hangout in the Bronx. One of his friends—a father who worked as a bike messenger for a Chinese restaurant—was taken away.

Irvi tried to reconnect with his relatives by attending birthday and anniversary parties. (“Half the town are his cousins,” Rachel told me.) He took me along to one party, in a small house with a concrete floor. Plastic tables, with bowls of taco fixings, were set up in a long row that stretched from the kitchen into the living room.

I sat with two of Irvi’s aunts, Chela Santiago and Blanca Méndez, who are in their late 60s and have spent their whole lives in San Lorenzo Cacaotepec. Their fathers traveled back and forth to the United States, first as Braceros, then as unauthorized farmhands. Since then, dozens of relatives have followed. Chela’s brother went to New York in the 1990s and slept 10 to a room.

“What they say about the United States isn’t true,” he said when he returned. “They treat you like animals.”

Without poor Mexicans, Blanca told me, the U.S. would not exist. “I would like for all the Mexicans in the United States to come here,” she said, “and then let’s see what the United States really is.”

Though Irvi was only a few seats away, she offered another blunt assessment of those who choose to leave home: “Sometimes they go because they want a life that isn’t theirs. Here, we live authentically.”

Irvi was quiet. The United States was where he’d become a man, a husband, a father, a homeowner, a model citizen in every respect except the one that mattered to the U.S. government. Now he had done what his aunt wanted—what President Trump wanted—and he was beginning to live with that choice. Surrounded by family, he looked like a man without a home.

Natalie Keyssar for The Atlantic

Irvi’s father, Martín, places his hands on his son’s shoulders at a family gathering in San Lorenzo Cacaotepec in November 2025.

People who migrate across borders leave pieces of themselves behind—pieces that don’t fit neatly back into place, even upon return. Irvi had known this since he was 19. A year after the family decided to leave the U.S., Rachel and the girls were discovering it, too. They went to New York to visit Rachel’s parents this past Christmas; right away, Sara bought frosted strawberry Pop-Tarts to bring back to her classmates in Oaxaca. She giggled on the phone at night with her new Mexican boyfriend. But Rachel had to pry her and Ana away from playdates with their New York friends. She changed the subject when they asked about visiting again for spring break in a few months.

They ate traditional Chinese food in one friend’s home, Russian in another, Dominican in another—the kind of New York experience that they were all realizing they missed. During one visit in Harlem, Rachel asked to speak with me alone, at a coffee shop nearby. When we sat together, she finally broke down. She felt guilty every time she heard her daughters say they were happy to be “home” for the holidays. She saw them falling behind their New York friends academically, so she bought an algebra book to teach them herself. Her old fear of ICE was coursing through her body, even though Irvi was safe in Mexico. And she had been stifling these emotions around her parents all week, because none of them wanted to be the first to cry.

“We tried so hard to make it work,” she told me. “I can’t think of anything else we could have done. And that’s the hardest thing about being here. We’re nice people. My kids are amazing. New York City would have been so lucky to have my kids.”

She told me that a few days earlier, she had gone to visit an uncle in her old neighborhood in the Bronx, but avoided driving past the bright-blue house. Cookie, their neighbor, had reported that another family moved in but left within weeks. The house was dark and empty. The gardens were a mess. An old couch was outside, rotting.

The Cruzes had poured themselves into that house. Now it looked like they had never lived there. Rachel couldn’t bear to see it.

This article appears in the April 2026 print edition with the headline “Leaving the United States Behind.”

How ICE Lost Its Guardrails

2026-01-09T14:18:00-05:00

If the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was still functioning as it did before Donald Trump returned to the presidency, Julie Plavsic and her former colleagues would have spent yesterday opening an investigation into the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer in Minnesota. Although the DHS inspector general takes the lead on criminal investigations of officers, after an incident like this, CRCL’s job would have been to review policies, training, and oversight procedures to try to prevent anything like it from happening again. But today, the office is effectively dormant.

Plavsic was a senior policy adviser at CRCL. She and her colleagues were put on leave in March and officially dismissed from their positions two months later. The administration also closed two other offices with mandates to protect the public from misconduct—the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman and the Immigration Detention Ombudsman—saying the cuts were necessary to limit redundancy. Nonprofit groups sued, arguing that a department with more than 250,000 employees that interacts with 3 million to 4 million members of the public each day needed more oversight, not less. The offices reopened with a skeleton staff of inexperienced contractors who, former officials told me, are doing almost nothing. (DHS did not respond to my request for comment.)

Across the department, DHS has experienced considerable turnover since Trump returned to office, as supporters of his mass-deportation plans have replaced people with years of experience. “They have different priorities and they don’t care about safety and they don’t care about doing things right,” Plavsic told me. She retired after she was laid off. Since the Minneapolis shooting, she has been talking with former colleagues who no longer recognize the agency they worked for: “People are just saying, ‘I’m so glad to be unaffiliated with DHS.’”

The changes at DHS are part of a government-wide push by the administration away from transparency and accountability. Trump fired 17 inspectors general soon after he took office. He has neutered civil-rights offices across multiple departments. And he handed ICE the biggest cash infusion it’s ever seen, more than tripling the agency’s budget, without attaching any requirements for oversight. All the while, the president, his top advisers, and his public-affairs offices have pumped out rhetoric and imagery that celebrates the merciless, military-style pursuit of deportations. The overall message to employees, including those who carry weapons, is that anything goes.

[Read: ICE’s mind-bogglingly massive blank check]

The DHS oversight offices that Trump all but scrapped did not have enforcement powers, but their recommendations often led to significant policy changes. All three were created by Congress. CRCL investigated the use of whole-body restraints and sent rapid-response teams to investigate the Border Patrol’s practice of corralling people outdoors under bridges when it ran out of detention space. Staff from the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman made frequent visits to detention centers, identifying violations of the agency’s health and safety standards. The Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman handled more than 20,000 complaints a year from immigrants and their employers about the visa-application process.

Trump’s recent statements suggest that immigration officers are now free to act without fear of accountability. Video recordings of the Minneapolis shooting show Good telling the officer “I’m not mad at you,” then briefly moving her SUV toward him before turning away. The vehicle appears to clip him as he opens fire. But within hours of the incident, before investigators had reached any conclusions, Trump posted online that Good “ran over the ICE Officer.” Kristi Noem, the homeland-security secretary, accused Good of domestic terrorism, a label the administration has used to justify cracking down on political opponents. A DHS spokesperson blamed “rioters,” even though the recordings show no evidence of a riot. “It seems like the message is that the only repercussions are for not going far enough,” Claire Trickler-McNulty, who spent more than a decade in both nonpolitical and politically appointed positions at ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told me. She departed last January.

[Read: First the shooting. Then the lies.]

At least 11 people have been shot by immigration-enforcement officers since Trump returned to office, two of them just yesterday, in Portland, Oregon. ICE was involved in three shootings in 2023 and five the year before, according to an analysis by The New York Times. None of the officers who shot civilians in the past year has been disciplined, according to CBS News.

The leaders of the agencies that will investigate the shooting face their own controversies. The DHS’s inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, is one of the few IGs who survived Trump’s firings, but he’s been embroiled in scandals for years. Cuffari has been accused of, among other things, retaliating against his employees and failing to disclose during his confirmation hearings that he had been under investigation when he left a previous job at the Department of Justice. (Cuffari has called the accusations “baseless.”) The administration is blocking Minnesota police from the investigation into Good’s death, leaving it in the hands of Kash Patel’s FBI.

Former ICE officers I spoke with said that the Minneapolis shooting never should have happened, and that it seemed to stem, in part, from the overwhelming pressure the agency is working under. Jim Rielly, who spent 23 years at ICE, said the encounter looks problematic from the start. It begins with Good’s car in the path of an ICE vehicle. An officer gets out and rushes toward her, yelling at her to “get out of the fucking car” and trying to force open her car door. “I would have said, ‘Ma’am, please shut your car off and get out of the car,’” he told me, sounding bewildered. “It looks like she just panicked.”

[Read: Lethal force on a frozen street]

Rielly acknowledged that Good failed to comply with the officer’s demands, but he said there was no reason to fire a weapon. ICE policy allows deadly force only when there is a “reasonable belief” of imminent death or bodily harm. The officer who shot Good, identified in multiple press reports as Jonathan Ross, could have simply stepped to the side to avoid being hit, Rielly said. Ross did so, but at the same time, he shot Good at least three times. “If she wants to drive off, let her drive off,” Rielly said.

Ross had more than a decade of experience and was part of a unit trained to handle tactical arrests, but not traffic stops. Over the summer, he was dragged by a car and seriously injured while trying to arrest the driver. Rielly and others I interviewed said that law-enforcement officers who conduct traffic stops are trained never to hold on to a moving vehicle, as it appears Ross did in the first incident, or to shoot at one, as he did in this one. Rielly also said Ross should have known better than to stand in front of Good’s car. “That’s common sense and good police work,” one officer who recently retired told me. The agency’s policy dictates that officers “avoid intentionally and unreasonably placing themselves in positions in which they have no alternative to using deadly force.”

Since the Wednesday shooting, Rielly and his former colleagues in the Chicago field office have been discussing how some ICE employees—including those who are great at their desk jobs—aren’t well trained or confident enough to calmly interact with the public. Now that ICE is bringing on new recruits in droves while cutting training time, Rielly said he worries more incidents like the one in Minneapolis are inevitable. One former colleague texted him, “You should see the guys they’re hiring now.”

Hundreds of Thousands of Anonymous Deportees

2025-11-09T07:00:00-05:00

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One morning in March, as ICE was building momentum in carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign, dozens of people who had recently been detained throughout Virginia were being rushed through preliminary hearings. The government was using Zoom to save time, so Judge Karen Donoso Stevens sat in a mostly empty courtroom, adjourning some proceedings in less than two minutes each.

Donoso Stevens yelled at a man to “stop talking!” while his own case was being heard and became frustrated with another who got confused when she referred to him as “the man in the green jacket.” (He wasn’t wearing a green jacket.) When a father said he was scared to leave the country without his 5-year-old, she ignored the comment and asked if he had enough money to pay for his ticket home. I was in court that day hoping to see how Trump’s new deportation mandate was playing out, but the hearings were moving so quickly that I was having trouble keeping up.

Some people said they needed more time to find lawyers or fill out applications. I was getting only snippets of people’s stories, as one bled into the next. But time seemed to slow around noon, when Donoso Stevens called a man from El Salvador with pale skin and short curly hair, wearing an orange jumpsuit, with his hands cuffed behind his back. “I’m very worried about my three babies,” he said in a slow, shaky voice. “The officers arrested me in front of the two littlest ones, who are 2 and 4.” He began to cry, explaining that his youngest had been sick, and that his 4-year-old’s first words to him since his arrest had been to ask if the officers who took him away had hurt him.

After the hearing, I asked an attorney to try to reach the man. (Only lawyers can directly call people who are in immigration custody. Detainees have to initiate calls with anyone else.) She tried several times but never heard back. He seemed to vanish, leaving me wondering for months what had happened to him.

[Read: They never thought Trump would have them deported]

Since then, I’ve often thought of that man while scrolling social media, where the stories of other people arrested by ICE have gone viral, turning some into minor celebrities: There was Ming “Carol” Li Hui, a waitress and mother from Missouri whose Trump-supporting neighbors and customers wore Bring Carol home T-shirts; and Marcelo Gomes da Silva, a high-school student in Massachusetts whose friends posted signs of his face in their front yards; and Narciso Barranco, the California landscaper whose three sons, all Marines, went on national television to decry their father’s violent arrest. These stories have spread because they seem—due to the young age of the person arrested, their contributions to the country, or the fact that they have young children at home—like exceptions whose treatment was uniquely harsh.

Sitting in immigration court, I saw firsthand that they represent the norm. There was at least one deportation case that most Americans would likely support—a man who had been convicted of child sodomy—but most detainees were people without a criminal history who were worried about getting back to their families and their jobs.

I wondered if the crying father might have also become a household name if his story were online. Instead, like most people who are detained across the country right now, he remained unknown and unreachable.

Most of Trump’s deportation campaign is inaccessible because after arrests are made, it is moving quickly, far from public view. And because it is targeting people who have spent an average of 16 years in the United States, trying, in many cases, to avoid public attention, rather than court it. That makes it difficult to fathom the full picture of what’s happening. In the age of virality, our devices offer up individual case studies, allowing us to congregate around them virtually. Although this is useful in helping us understand what happens when a person is plucked from their home, it takes our attention away from the larger story—more than half a million people deported, millions more at risk—and focuses us instead on a tiny part of it.

More than 70 percent of people in immigration custody have no criminal past. Although ICE has not released data on how many of them left children behind when they were arrested, the fact that an estimated 6 million kids in the United States have at least one parent without legal status suggests that this is the case for many. And detention centers for children have been packed since Trump took office. But none of this is easy to witness.

The high-profile incidents have also helped a select few who are slated for deportation raise money for lawyers, or even be released. But they risk creating the impression that sharing stories on social media might somehow keep ICE’s work at bay. It won’t: Congress recently tripled the agency’s budget, making it the highest-funded law-enforcement agency in the country, and allocated $45 billion to expand its detention centers.

[Read: ICE’s mind-bogglingly massive blank check]

When Marcelo Gomes da Silva, the Massachusetts high-school student, was released, he held a press conference, surrounded by supporters. He seemed most troubled not by his own arrest, which took place while he was driving himself and some of his friends to volleyball practice, but by the prevalence of experiences like his. He said that he had told the other men he was detained with, “When I’m out, if I’m the only one who was able to leave that place, I lost,” adding, “I want to do whatever I can to get them as much help as possible.”

Amid the barrage of stories flooding our phones, da Silva was conveying something that’s easy to miss. For every person arrested whose name and story we’ve learned, there are thousands we haven’t heard about. Despite becoming famous for being treated harshly, da Silva is one of the lucky ones.

Most people detained by ICE are being housed in sprawling complexes in rural areas, where the land is cheap and the protests are few. Akiv Dawson, a criminologist at Georgia Southern University, has been conducting research at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, which can hold up to 2,000 people at a time. She said that since Trump took office, courtrooms have been packed with immigrants whose experiences would, according to polling, trouble the average American—people who have lived in the U.S. for decades, have American-born children, and have never been convicted of a serious crime. She told me about a lawful permanent resident of 50 years whose child is a U.S. citizen and whose deceased wife was as well. The man explained in court that ICE agents had mistaken him for someone else when they arrested him. But he admitted in court to having a single criminal conviction—simple marijuana possession from 30 years ago—so the judge decided to let the deportation case against him proceed. The man told the judge that his belongings would soon be thrown into the street if he wasn’t released; he needed to go back to work and pay rent. “He began to panic,” Dawson told me. “He said, ‘My people don’t even know that I’m here. They came and took me from my bed.’” Dawson said the man asked the judge why this was happening after he had spent so many decades in the United States. She replied, “Sir, this is happening across the country.”

Dawson also told me about a young mother from Ecuador who had followed the legal process for requesting asylum and pleaded to be released on bail so that she could be reunited with her 2-year-old son, whom she had left with a neighbor. “She begged,” Dawson said, and recalled the woman saying, “Please, give me an opportunity so that I can do the process the right way.” The woman said she wouldn’t be able to continue with her asylum case if she was going to have to do it from inside a detention center. “I have a child. I can’t be here too long without him,” she said. With that, the judge said the woman had waived her right to relief, and continued processing her for removal from the country.

“Are you going to deport me with my son?” the woman asked. “I don’t have anyone to keep him here.”

“You would need to talk to your deportation officer,” the judge replied, according to Dawson. “I’m only handling your case.”

Dawson pointed out that neither of these people—like the significant majority of those who are being held in ICE custody—had an attorney to defend them, making them five and a half times more likely to lose their case and be deported. Unlike criminal defendants, immigrants who cannot afford an attorney are not legally entitled to a public defender—and even those who can afford to hire representation are hard-pressed to find it in the remote areas where they are being detained. There is one immigration lawyer based in Lumpkin full-time; for more than a decade after the facility opened, there was none. Some lawyers represent clients there virtually, but presenting a compelling case via a computer screen can be difficult, especially with temperamental technology and glitchy internet connections. More than nine in 10 people detained there lose their immigration case and are deported.

ICE is supposed to track when it arrests people who have minor children, and to ensure that their wishes for where children end up are carried out in the case of a deportation. But immigrant advocates say they worry, given how quickly new officers are being trained, that the agency may not be keeping adequate records, as was the case with families who were separated at the southwestern border the first time Trump was president. (Tricia McLaughlin, an ICE spokesperson, said the agency was in full compliance with requirements.) In the absence of clarity, it’s become common to underestimate the scale of what is happening. In August, for example, a public outcry followed the arrest in a New York City courthouse of a 6-year-old, who was initially reported to be the first child detained in the city during Trump’s second term. Soon after, however, journalists found that in the two months prior to that incident, 48 children had been arrested in the jurisdiction that includes the city. Data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act showed that 32 of those children had already been deported. Their stories were simply missed.

Chance has long played an outsize role in immigration courts. There are no juries, and a person’s likelihood of winning can depend more on the judge they are assigned than the facts of their case. Social media has only exacerbated this phenomenon. Marcelo Gomes da Silva’s lawyer, Robin Nice, told me that as the community rallied around her client, the chief ICE prosecutor called her directly to discuss the situation—a first in her 13-year career—and his bond hearing was scheduled faster than she had seen in any previous case. Although the administration appears more intent on deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, even after it erroneously sent him to a Salvadoran megaprison and had to bring him back under court order, because of the public attention to his case, his family has been showered with donations. And Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, personally inquired about a mother and three children from Sackets Harbor, New York, whose detention had prompted a publicity campaign led by local teachers. Homan grew up nearby and said the case was unfortunate because it brought undue attention to the town where he would like to retire. The family was quickly released.

But most unauthorized immigrants are likely to be uncomfortable broadcasting their deportation case—especially when the administration has shown that no location, age, illness, or disability guarantees a humanitarian reprieve.

Months after I sat in the Virginia immigration court, I managed to track down the father whose story had stayed with me. His experience was full of the kinds of details that have led most Americans to believe that Trump has taken his deportation mandate too far. But he asked not to be named in my story, for fear that drawing attention to his family could further harm them.

The man’s lawyer, Vishrut Shelat, explained that his client has lived in the United States since 2018 and has no criminal record. The man landed in ICE custody after being arrested in January when a neighbor called the police and accused him of breaking into a car and of having a domestic dispute. Both charges were dropped when he and his wife denied having a fight and proved that the car he was trying to get into was their own.

Despite this, he wasn’t eligible for bail, because he was arrested days after Congress passed the Laken Riley Act. The bill is named after a young woman who was raped and murdered by a man who was previously released from criminal custody on bail. It makes people who have been accused, but not convicted, of relatively minor infractions such as theft ineligible for pretrial release. Judge Donoso Stevens had explained that under the new law, her hands were tied. Even after the police acknowledged that he hadn’t attempted to steal anything, the accusation alone meant that he would have to spend months in jail.

Shelat told me that his client’s landlord has already begun eviction proceedings against his wife, who can no longer pay the rent. She and their three children have been buying food with donations from relatives and their church, but they are not sure how long those will last. Without any hope of release, the man agreed to be returned to El Salvador, leaving his wife and children behind. He hopes to file a petition when he arrives to return to his family as soon as possible. His application will land in a pile of many from people whose stories we’ll never hear.

‘It’s Never Been This Bad’

2025-10-11T08:00:00-04:00

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Since immigration-enforcement agents began their descent on Chicago, acting with seemingly unprecedented speed and ferocity, Evelyn Vargas and her colleagues at Organized Communities Against Deportation have been in a frenzy. They help run an emergency hotline that refers people who have been detained to immigration lawyers and directs their families to support services such as food pantries, emergency housing, and mental-health care. (On a single day last week, it took 800 calls.) And they oversee a team of 35 “rapid responders” who have been sprinting across the city to film arrests, aiming for at least two to arrive on the scene within 10 minutes.

When training volunteers, OCAD instructs them to stay a safe distance from agents and makes clear that their goal is to observe but not intervene or prevent arrests. They share footage with elected officials and lawyers representing those apprehended, but do not post the videos online. And they emphasize that the safety of everyone involved is their top priority. Despite these precautions, Vargas told me that her colleagues, and others doing similar work in Chicago, have been thrown to the ground, pepper-sprayed, and tailed in their cars by officers in an apparent attempt to intimidate them. A few weeks ago, agents temporarily detained some of their members—all of whom are citizens or legal residents—so Vargas and her colleagues quickly removed them from group chats in case their devices were searched.

[Isaac Stanley-Becker: Portland’s ‘war zone’ is like Burning Man for the terminally online]

To protect themselves and their work, they also keep their office location private and have started to ban phones, laptops, and other devices from meetings. No notes are allowed, except those taken by lawyers, about people who could be targeted by ICE. People interested in joining the group require an invitation and may be asked to participate after attending three meetings, but only if their references check out.

Vargas said she worries about what OCAD’s volunteers will face next. “This feels pretty bad,” she told me. “It’s so hard to not know if the tailing is just an incremental thing, and it’s gonna stop there, or keep going.”

Since Donald Trump and his top aides directed a cavalcade of government agencies and tens of billions of dollars toward their effort to deport immigrants en masse, the advocates defending them have become targets, too. Their ranks span levels of experience, funding, and professionalism, from individual lawyers at long-established firms to parent volunteers who walk immigrant children to school. ICE is facing more aggressive challenges to its work than usual, not all of it from groups with clear safety guidelines. But the administration has begun characterizing virtually any opposition as part of a conspiracy to dox, harm, or even kill ICE agents and upend the rule of law, launching an attack that it promises is just beginning.

House Republicans have demanded financial records from nonprofit groups that they accused of fueling illegal border crossings and training immigrants on how to avoid cooperating with ICE. Trump’s Justice Department has sought monetary sanctions against immigration lawyers, and the Department of Education has dangled the possibility of excluding them from public-service loan-forgiveness programs. The Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI are investigating the clashes between officers and activists in the streets, and representatives of the Department of Homeland Security say that, along with the IRS, they are tracking “what NGOs, unions, and other individuals may be funding these violent riots.” For those who are interacting with ICE directly, the threats are often physical.

Hours after a bullet casing inscribed with the phrase anti-ICE was discovered near one of the agency’s facilities in Dallas, where two immigrants were killed and one was critically injured last month, Trump declared that criticizing the agency inevitably leads to violence. He then directed the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force to “disrupt and dismantle” activist groups. But the memo is written so broadly as to include people who have opposing views on capitalism, migration, race, and gender.

“Many of these so-called advocates are actually engaging in violent and dangerous behavior,” Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, told me in a statement. She added, in reference to Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker: “From comparisons to the modern-day Nazi gestapo to glorifying rioters, the violent rhetoric of these sanctuary politicians is beyond the pale. This rhetoric is contributing to a more than 1000% surge in assaults of our ICE officers.”

And yet this comes at a time when ICE itself has become more violent toward immigrants, protesters, and unlucky bystanders alike. In recent weeks, agents have shoved to the ground a journalist trying to document an arrest and a woman who was crying because her husband had just been taken into custody. Both were hospitalized. And in Chicago, they shot a woman who they say rammed an agency vehicle—a claim that the woman’s lawyer said body-camera footage disproves. Alongside the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and the FBI, ICE also stormed an apartment building in the dark of night, breaking down doors and detaining scores of people, including U.S. citizens. Bystanders reported seeing children zip-tied to one another.

[Brandon del Pozo: Take off the mask, ICE]

The administration has said that officers have no choice but to be aggressive when the public attempts to interfere with their work. “Secretary Noem has a clear message to rioters,” McLaughlin said. “You will not stop or slow us down. ICE and CBP will continue to enforce the law.”

OCAD does not condone violence under any circumstances, but embraces the leftist viewpoints that Trump often berates. Vargas told me the group supports immigrants regardless of whether they’ve broken any laws, rejecting the argument that some—typically hardworking parents with no criminal records—deserve empathy and others don’t. Its members identify as abolitionists, believing that state investments in marginalized communities would more effectively and humanely counter societal problems than the immigration and criminal-justice systems. In their work filming arrests, they take inspiration from the Black Panther Party, which organized “Copwatch” patrols during the 1960s civil-rights movement. (Their vigilance around who is allowed to volunteer with them is also rooted in history; the FBI infiltrated the Panthers and other civil-rights organizations to try to disrupt their work and prosecute members.)

The administration is bearing down on more mainstream immigrant-advocacy groups, too. At the National Immigration Law Center, which has advised Congress and filed precedent-setting litigation for 46 years, staff attorneys have memorized phone numbers to call if they’re arrested. “We normally do know-your-rights presentations for immigrants—now we’re doing it for our staff,” Kica Matos, the organization’s president, told me. “I’ve been doing this work for 20 years, and it’s never been this bad.”

Matos said people are still eagerly coming forward to support the work, but their demographics have changed. Whereas before, rallies her group organized or participated in were attended mostly by immigrants and people of color, she said “the last rally I went to, I’d say, was made up of 70 to 75 percent white folks. Immigrants are too afraid now in many communities to speak out and to take part.” In the past, an undocumented speaker would often headline those rallies, but now the group makes sure to spotlight only U.S. citizens.

Brian Hauss, a First Amendment attorney at the ACLU, told me that listservs connecting tens of thousands of immigration lawyers have been alight with questions about what might trigger the administration to come after them. Hauss said that many are concerned about not having their student loans forgiven after spending years in public-service jobs if the administration deems their work to be “supporting terrorism” or subsidizing “illegal immigration, human smuggling, child trafficking, pervasive damage to public property, and disruption of the public order,” as a recent executive order warns. In August, Justice Department lawyers filed a motion to financially sanction an attorney who they said made frivolous arguments as he tried to stop the deportation of a man to Laos. The attorney, Joshua Schroeder, challenged the motion; a judge has yet to decide on it. “Nobody knows what the lines are anymore. Everyone is asking, ‘If I do this, will I get in trouble?’ ‘Is this okay, or is that okay?’ And the answers are ‘I don’t know,’” Hauss said. “Even if you win in court and are within your rights, there could be a lot of damage done.”

Some lawyers have had to get lawyers themselves. The Hana Center, which serves about 16,000 immigrants a year in Chicago and created an app that can send a message to your emergency contact or notify your consulate if you encounter ICE, reinforced its cybersecurity system and hired lawyers to review social-media posts and press releases, according to its executive director, Danae Kovac. Karen Musalo, the director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Law San Francisco, secured pro bono counsel to respond on her organization’s behalf when it was one of more than 200 groups probed by the House Homeland Security Committee. Musalo called the inquiry “performative for the MAGA base” and an “attempt to intimidate” her staff, adding that her attorneys remain steadfast. “To be intimidated against doing what one thinks is ethical and principled because of the threat of retaliation is cowardice at its core,” she told me. “I don’t want to live in a society where everyone capitulates.”

[Adam Serwer: Lower than cowards]

Some, however, have capitulated—particularly among the elite. Big law firms once dedicated enormous resources from their pro bono departments to defending immigrants against the government. But soon after Trump retook office, he began singling out those firms in executive orders that, if implemented, would have obliterated their businesses. Several struck deals in exchange for having orders against them dropped. Collectively, they have agreed to about $1 billion in free legal work on causes that the president supports. Even firms that were not explicitly targeted in executive orders have scaled back their pro bono work on immigration cases, in what one lawyer described to The New York Times as “anticipatory obedience.”

Despite the intense pressure that OCAD is facing, Vargas told me the organization doesn’t plan to stop. Nor, she said, does it long for the days before Trump was elected, when ICE carried out arrests that separated families and made their friends and neighbors live in fear, only with less fanfare. Many of the group’s members began advocating for immigrants’ rights when they were college students. They’ve never seen this level of aggression, but across Republican and Democratic administrations, they have experienced punishing periods of ICE enforcement. Vargas said she shudders to hear some people speak wistfully about the past, when the immigration system was still broken but the public debate over it was comparatively dispassionate. “Those discussions were about the subjugation and oppression of me,” she said. “If you want to have a calm conviction about it, I’m so glad you feel safe enough to do that—I am not.”

ICE’s Mind-Bogglingly Massive Blank Check

2025-07-31T10:00:00-04:00

The more than $175 billion that Congress handed to the nation’s immigration enforcers when it passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is larger than the annual military budget of every country in the world except the United States and China. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—just one component of the Department of Homeland Security—is getting more money than any other law-enforcement agency in America. All of this cash will be used to fund the next three and a half years of a deportation campaign that the public is already starting to question, at a time when the southern border is all but deserted.

But as striking as the overall amount of money is how little we know about why it was necessary or how the funds will be spent. The bill placed few guardrails on ICE or Customs and Border Protection—both of which have a history of financial mismanagement—and dedicated no money to oversight. What we do know from the agencies’ public statements and contracts that are already in the works is that the money will be used to expand detention and surveillance systems, and that it will enrich some of the administration’s closest friends.

When Donald Trump was inaugurated, top executives at the two largest private-prison companies that contract with the federal government to detain immigrants reacted with glee. In an earnings call with investors, Damon Hininger, the CEO of CoreCivic, called this “truly one of the most exciting periods” in his 32-year career with the company. CoreCivic’s stock price rose by more than 80 percent in the week after Trump’s reelection, while that of its top competitor, the GEO Group, doubled in less than a month. GEO’s CEO, J. David Donahue, told investors that “we believe the scale of the opportunity before our company is unlike any we’ve previously experienced.” GEO’s executive chairman and founder, George Zoley, estimated that the company could make $1 billion in additional revenue. (Whereas some in the private-prison industry might have become jittery when Trump started talking about detaining immigrants in Guantánamo Bay or countries such as El Salvador, instead of the United States, Hininger assured his investors that there would be enough detained immigrants to go around. “I want to be very clear on this: We don’t see that as an either/or. We actually see it as a both,” he said.)

[Read: Trump loves ICE. Its workforce has never been so miserable.]

GEO invested $70 million preparing to expand its detention capacity before Trump even took office; CoreCivic spent $40 million doing the same before a single new contract was signed. Just three years earlier, President Joe Biden had signed an executive order directing the Justice Department not to renew its contracts with private-prison companies, saying that they amounted to “profit-based incentives to incarcerate” in a system that “imposes significant costs and hardships on our society and communities and does not make us safer.” JPMorgan Chase said it would stop working with the industry. But now, with Trump, the companies’ leaders had good reason to feel confident: His election meant the elevation of figures such as Pam Bondi, who worked as a lobbyist for GEO as recently as 2019 and became attorney general in February, and Tom Homan, the president’s border czar, who was a GEO consultant during the Biden administration. The website for Homan’s consulting firm touted a “proven track record of opening doors and bringing successful relationships to our clients, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of federal contracts to private companies.” Homan has said he is recusing himself from contract negotiations now that he is back working for the government.

For years, high-level officials at ICE have retired from the agency into plum roles at both companies. Daniel Bible, who oversaw ICE’s detention system, is an executive vice president at GEO, and Matt Albence and Dan Ragsdale, ICE’s former acting director and deputy director, are senior vice presidents. CoreCivic has taken on at least two former ICE field-office directors and ICE’s former head of budgeting. David Venturella has ping-ponged between the two: After 22 years at ICE, he rose through the executive ranks at GEO to become the company’s head of client relations. Then, after Trump took office, he returned to ICE as a senior adviser.

This revolving door of hiring effectively puts private-prison-company executives at the negotiating table across from their former underlings, who may also hope to cash out in the private sector when they leave their government jobs. These conditions are not exactly conducive to making sure that the government’s top negotiators don’t agree to overpay for what they are purchasing, or that they hold contractors to account. DHS officials didn’t respond to my request for a comment. Ryan Gustin, a spokesman for CoreCivic, told me the company follows rules set by the government for how former employees may interact with their previous agencies, and that “there’s no basis for the claim that hiring former ICE officials results in higher costs or reduced accountability.”

The confidence expressed by GEO and CoreCivic executives has paid off. Trump’s spending bill provides $45 billion to ICE to expand the nation’s detention system. It also dedicates $3.33 billion to immigration courts, but caps the number of judges who can be hired at 800–one of the few limits the bill contains. At the same time, the administration has actually been firing immigration judges, who have the power to hand down deportation orders and without which a person can’t be removed from the United States. Hiring more will take months or years, and in the meantime, having fewer of them around now will only lead to more people being detained. “They’re not really serious about getting rid of as many people as they can. They’re serious about causing human pain and suffering,” a former high-level ICE official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, told me. “Putting someone into detention isn’t a removal, it’s a punishment.”

Allies of the administration are also in for a windfall in the technology sector. Palantir—whose co-founder and board chairman, Peter Thiel, is a strong supporter of Vice President J. D. Vance and has a hot-and-cold-but-mostly-hot relationship with Trump—has already secured $30 million to help ICE identify immigrants and track their locations. Palantir’s stock price has soared by 200 percent since Trump was reelected, helped by the growth of its government contracts under both Democratic and Republican administrations and its work in AI.

Several former Palantir employees have gone to work for DOGE, which is reportedly creating a “master database” of immigrants by leveraging data from across the federal government. How the administration will use its stockpile of data, which almost certainly includes information on unsuspecting American citizens too, remains unclear. For a decade after 9/11, DHS spent millions surveilling people from predominantly Muslim countries as part of a program that the government later acknowledged “provided no discernible public benefit.”

ICE has also expanded into phone tracking, and posted a request for contracts to help it monitor up to 1 million people using their social-media accounts, financial records, and the dark web, among other information sources. In April, CBP posted a request for information from vendors on how to expand the use of facial-recognition technology at the border. Trump’s big spending bill provides the agencies nearly $6 billion to fund these technological advancements.

This kind of spyware might make sense if precision were a priority in the administration’s approach to deportations, but the opposite appears to be true. On the streets and in immigration courts, it’s become clear, as ICE strives to conduct 3,000 arrests a day, that anyone whose legal status is in doubt is fair game, including people with no criminal history—even children. Undocumented immigrants aren’t at all hard to find in the United States: They’re on farms and dairies and in restaurant kitchens and at construction sites. They’re delivering groceries and warm meals to front doors across the country, cleaning and landscaping homes, and caring for elders. An efficient way of deporting 1 million people a year would involve ICE simply raiding those workplaces one by one. But the administration has already learned that the political blowback from doing so would be untenable, because businesses would fail and communities would revolt. Instead of paring back its goals, the White House has continued spending indiscriminately. “They want a lot of toys because it’s fun, but a lot of those toys are not necessary or probably all that helpful at the end of the day in terms of actually making the arrests,” the former ICE official told me.

For years, Congress has criticized CBP and ICE for mismanaging their budgets, while also increasing those budgets at a remarkable pace. Since at least 2012, the United States has spent more money on immigration enforcement than on all other federal-law-enforcement endeavors combined. CBP’s budget went from $5.9 billion in 2003 to $13.6 billion in 2016; ICE’s increased by 50 percent over the same stretch of time, reaching $6.3 billion in 2016, according to The Deportation Machine, a book by the University of Illinois historian Adam Goodman. The next year, when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress, House appropriators called out ICE for a “lack of fiscal discipline and cavalier management of funding for detention operations.” In 2018, appropriators scolded the agency again for its “inability to manage detention resources.”

[Read: Trump’s deportations aren’t what they seem]

Congress has specifically faulted ICE for its inability to estimate how much money it will need to carry out its mission, and just this year, legislators raised alarms about the agency’s “especially egregious” overspending. But when it came time to draft Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, its authors seem to have accepted the agency’s requests without question. In a year that has already been one of the deadliest on record in immigration-detention facilities, the bill seems to leave health and safety standards up to the discretion of the secretary, potentially dispensing with years of bipartisan work to establish baseline requirements. Homan has indicated that he believes immigrant-detention standards are too high, and DOGE gutted the two offices that oversaw them: the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman and the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. But an ICE spokesperson told reporters that the agency continues to uphold the rules without any changes to its oversight procedures.

The growth that the immigration-detention system is about to undergo may be difficult, if not impossible, to undo. The facilities tend to become economic engines in the communities that surround them, many of which are rural and poor. Once they open, closing them can become a political problem in its own right. Nancy Hiemstra, a professor at Stony Brook University who co-wrote the book Immigration Detention Inc., told me that since the system was established, its funding has almost never decreased. Instead, the spending is reinforced by all of the people and organizations whose financial interest is geared toward growth, including the subcontractors that operate within detention centers, providing services such as medical care and food. The same will be true of state and local agencies vying for a portion of at least $10 billion in reimbursement funds that Trump’s bill created for those that help the administration with immigration enforcement. “Right now they’re saying, ‘We need more space, we’re overcrowded,’ creating this idea of chaos and overcrowding to use more funds,” she told me. “Then, once the money is out there, there are many people who are dependent on it.”

They Never Thought Trump Would Have Them Deported

2025-04-15T15:23:00-04:00

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Speaking to a classroom of students at his alma mater, Boston University’s School of Theology, Martin Mugerwa described how being a chaplain informs his work as a counselor at a mental-health clinic, where he treats people navigating depression, unemployment, and homelessness. But the campus was whirring with talk of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, and several international students stayed after class that February evening to ask whether Mugerwa—who is from Uganda—feared that he could be targeted. “I’m not worried,” Mugerwa told them confidently. “He’s going after criminals.”

Mugerwa told me that his outlook on the new presidency, and how it could alter his own fate, changed the next day. His family and a group of friends stopped to see Niagara Falls on their way to visit one of Mugerwa’s seminary classmates. But they took a wrong turn and ended up on a bridge that led across the Canadian border. When they told an American customs officer that they wanted to turn around and remain in the United States, they were directed instead to an immigration office. Hours later, an official explained that Mugerwa and two others in the group were going to be detained for overstaying their visas, even though they had all applied for asylum and were still waiting for their cases to be decided.

Mugerwa turned to his partner and sons, who are 5 years old and 10 months old. “I was like, What is going to happen at this point? How is she going to manage?” he recalled thinking. “Who is going to pay the mortgage? My mind was just spinning.”

[Read: Trump dares the Supreme Court to do something]

Five days later, he was in shackles, being booked into a federal detention center in Texas and certain that he would soon be deported.

Throughout his campaign and since taking office, President Donald Trump has promised that the “mass deportation” effort carried out at his direction would focus on unauthorized immigrants with serious criminal records—an idea that most Americans continue to view favorably. The administration has at times argued that because unlawful presence is a civil violation, any deportation is in keeping with the president’s prior statements. But many Trump supporters, including undocumented immigrants themselves, took to heart his repeated assurances that the administration would put the emphasis squarely on people who clearly threatened public safety.

That hasn’t happened. In the face of immense pressure to hit the president’s stated goals for arrests and deportations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are arresting people who, polling suggests, most Americans believe should be left alone, if not offered a pathway to legal residency after completing an application process. Like Mugerwa, many of them have American-born children, no criminal record, and a documented history of paying taxes and contributing to society through their churches and volunteer work. “They’re sort of like the perfect noncitizen,” Mugerwa’s lawyer, Christina Corbaci, told me. “In no other time would you see them get picked up.”

In fact, deportations of people with limited or no criminal record increased during Barack Obama’s first term, and frustrated progressives labeled him the deporter in chief. The public outcry that followed led to efforts by members of Congress to protect various categories of immigrants—including essential workers, the parents of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, and longtime U.S. residents. Nearly all of those efforts have failed. But the Obama and Biden administrations used other tools to achieve similar ends, directing ICE to avoid arresting such people and closing their deportation cases. During his first term, Trump limited the use of those programs, and he appears close to eliminating them now.

The deportation push is likely to intensify. Trump promised the largest campaign in history, but ICE has struggled to deliver the numbers he wants. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently announced that all immigrants without legal status must register with the government or face criminal consequences, which could make it easier for ICE to locate people who have had no other interactions with law enforcement.

“When I was an officer, you had discretion, and if someone made a reasonable request to stay and was following the rules, I would usually grant it,” Jim Rielly, who spent 23 years as an officer for ICE and its predecessor, Immigration and Naturalization Services, told me. “Now it seems like it’s being dictated that anyone is fair game.”

ICE did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has offered mixed messages, telling journalists in one interview that ICE would determine how to address noncriminal immigrants “on a case-by-case basis” but saying in another, “We’re not going to tell ICE to ignore the oath that they took to enforce immigration law and walk away from the illegal alien.”

Some of the president’s most influential supporters, including Joe Rogan and Ann Coulter, have criticized the arrests of some noncriminal immigrants. Rogan called the deportation of a Venezuelan makeup artist to a prison in El Salvador for his alleged membership in a gang—for which the administration has presented only dubious proof—“horrific.”

Israel Rose, a Republican immigration lawyer who voted for Trump, told me he has been troubled by the cases he’s seen ICE pursue. Rose, who specializes in representing people from former Soviet-bloc countries, is involved in the cases of two Moldovan men who have been detained since February. They have no criminal records and American-born children as young as 2 years old. “They both are successful businessmen who pay taxes every year. It’s a shame,” Rose said.

He said the cases, and others that he is working on, have tempered his support for the president: “I love that he’s picking up violent criminals in the streets—we shouldn’t have that. But then you have cases like this where it’s like, ‘What are you doing?’ It’s very harsh.”

[Read: The constitutional crisis is here]

Rose said that although he opposes the pro-Palestinian protest movement at Columbia University that triggered the arrest of student activist Mahmoud Khalil, “even he should have his day to present his side of the story. That’s how this country works.” Considering that case, in which the administration initially sought to block Khalil from defending himself in court, and Trump’s refusal to return planes full of people deported to El Salvador in defiance of a judicial order, Rose said the president is acting “like he’s above the law at this point.”

Wilman Hernandez has lived in the United States for 22 years; owns a construction company in Manassas, Virginia; and, aside from two minor traffic violations, has a clean record. He was so certain that he was safe in the United States, despite lacking any legal immigration status, that he tried to move out of the way when he saw an ICE vehicle driving toward him early one morning in March while he was on his way to pick up an employee for work. Instead, officers jumped out of their car with guns drawn and began shouting orders at him. “I never thought it would be possible,” Hernandez told me. Trump “said he would arrest people who’d done bad things.” After his arrest, he was detained for a month.

Hernandez said his 6-year-old daughter has been in therapy since his arrest, after which she developed insomnia and started crying throughout the school day. His wife, who is also undocumented, refused to leave the house for weeks, even to buy groceries, for fear of being arrested too.

To get Hernandez released from detention on a bond so that he could continue to work while he fights his deportation case, his lawyer secured letters of support from clients, former employers, and members of Hernandez’s church, as well as tithing records showing that he has donated more than $116,000 since 2008. He told me that while he was detained, he lost several jobs that he’d lined up, and some of his employees had to move on to work for other businesses. “All this month I’ve been trying to start over from zero,” he said.

The current crackdown has extended to other groups ICE previously considered low priorities for deportations, such as green-card holders with criminal records from years or even decades ago. That’s how Lewelyn Dixon, a lab technician at the University of Washington, ended up being detained in March on her way back from a trip to the Philippines, where she was born.

Dixon came to the United States with a green card as a teenager more than 50 years ago. She is among the only people in her family who chose not to pursue naturalization, because, she told me, her father’s dying wish was that she retain her Filipino citizenship in order to inherit land that the family owns there. This never seemed to present a problem, even after the sole encounter she had with law enforcement, 24 years ago. Dixon says that while she was working at a bank, a co-worker persuaded her to play a role in stealing $6,000. Dixon was convicted but never went to jail. She was sentenced to one month lived in a halfway house and wore an ankle monitor for a year. The conviction didn’t negate her eligibility for U.S. citizenship, but it did make her deportable—a legal limbo that is ensnaring others like her.

“We’re all freaking out,” one of Dixon’s nieces, Lani Madriaga, told me. “It’s like double jeopardy—she’s getting retried again on something that she did years ago.”

Because of the nature of the crime she committed, Dixon is subject to mandatory detention, making her part of a category that Congress voted in January to expand under the Laken Riley Act. “This is just so frustrating,” Dixon told me in a call from a Washington State detention center, where she said she is trying to keep her spirits up and encourage the other women around her, who, unlike her, can’t afford to hire a lawyer. “I don’t understand why they hold us here for this long.”

[From the September 2024 issue: Seventy miles in hell]

Dixon will remain in ICE custody at least until her next hearing, in July. If she is deported, she will lose the right to collect Social Security less than a year shy of her 65th birthday, after working in the United States her entire adult life.

Weeks into Mugerwa’s detention, his family raised $15,000 in donations to pay for his lawyer and a bond so he could be released. Despite his pending asylum claim, he remains in deportation proceedings; he will have to go before a judge to plead for a chance to stay in the United States.

But people with prior deportation orders—including those without any criminal record—won’t have that opportunity. Abel Orozco Ortega, a mild-mannered 47-year-old grandfather and the owner of a successful tree-trimming business who has lived in the United States since he was 17, was picked up at his home outside Chicago after Trump’s inauguration in January.

In the past, he would have been a prime candidate for the programs that allowed some unauthorized immigrants to remain in the country because of their long-standing ties here and contributions to society. But because those programs have largely been eliminated, a judge will never hear the details of his life. A deportation officer told his lawyer that he’ll likely soon be sent back to Mexico.

Lies About Immigration Help No One

2024-09-21T07:31:00-04:00

A growing number of Americans are pointing to immigration as a top concern heading into the election. But a substantive debate on the issue has become impossible, given that Donald Trump and his vice-presidential candidate, J. D. Vance, are only escalating their use of outright lies and xenophobia in lieu of anything resembling fact-based policy solutions.

On the campaign trail, Trump has said that immigrants are “animals” and “not human,” and implied that millions are crossing the border each month; publicly available data show that the real number has never exceeded 200,000 a month this year. When Vance took to X to declare that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets, and Trump repeated the lie in a nationally televised debate the next day, those of us who have studied the United States’ history of dehumanizing immigrants felt as if the clock had turned back 150 years, to when the same specious claim was used to justify vigilante violence against Chinese Americans, and laws including the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Trump and Vance’s claims, along with other copycat assertions meant to imply that nonwhite immigrants are inherently immoral, such as the one about “Haitian prostitutes” aired at a Springfield city-commission meeting, have surfaced throughout American history. But their prominence in the mainstream political debate, Jesse Rhodes, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, told me, suggests a society in decline—one where “politicians can speak to the worst aspects of human psychology and human emotions and get a positive response.”

This summer, a survey by Rhodes and some of his colleagues found that nearly a quarter of Americans now believe that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and that “many immigrants are terrorists.” More than a third of respondents said that “millions of undocumented immigrants illegally cast votes in our elections.”

These views are components of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory and fears of white extinction that have enjoyed some support since at least the 1890s. But Rhodes told me that, among political scientists, “there was a belief or hope or conceit—and I think maybe in retrospect it was naive—that we had gotten past that.”

Trump’s bald embrace of xenophobia is upending the long-held belief among political scientists that, since the civil-rights movement, which also involved the elimination of quotas in American immigration laws that were based on eugenics, overtly racist appeals would only harm the electoral chances of anyone running for public office. These researchers believed that the United States had transitioned into an era of “dog-whistle politics,” where appeals that were meant to divide people based on identity alone could succeed only if they were veiled in euphemism, as was the case with references to “welfare queens” and inner cities in decades past. As recently as 2019, Republican Representative Steve King lost his committee assignments and then a primary after claiming that there was nothing wrong with being a white supremacist. (He later said he rejected the label and the “evil ideology” behind it.)

But the Republican Party’s continued embrace of Trump suggests that the transition was either incomplete or reversible. Rhodes told me it means that America is in danger of falling into “groupism”—meaning a society that is organized around the belief that differences in race or immigration status are absolute and insurmountable, and where individual political decision making is based solely on advancing the interests of one’s own identity group. “Most political psychologists believe that an inclination toward groupism and those orientations, when inflamed, can lead to really bad consequences—raw discrimination and bias and, in extreme cases, genocide,” Rhodes told me. Of course, recent cases of violence motivated by fears about white replacement have already surfaced in mass shootings targeting immigrants and Black people in El Paso, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, for example.

Mae Ngai, a historian at Columbia University who has studied the wave of anti-Chinese violence up and down the West Coast in the mid-to-late-19th century that included dozens of instances of harassment, arson, and lynchings, told me she was “very worried” about the implications of Trump’s language, not so much on the election as in the groundwater of public opinion.

Rhodes told me that the moment we are living in now—one of fast demographic change, an unstable economy, and lots of immigration—is ripe for exploitation by proponents of groupism, because so many Americans are overwhelmed with anxiety about their prospects in life and about where the country is going. He posited that in a counterfactual scenario—an economy and society where everyone was thriving and people felt relatively secure—“folks like Donald Trump would be out there, but they wouldn’t be getting much traction.” He added, “The stuff he’s talking about, neo-Nazis have been talking about for decades.”

To simply say that Americans’ views of immigrants have become wholly and irrevocably negative would be misleading, however. At the same time that respondents to the Amherst poll indicated a growing embrace of ideas rooted in the Great Replacement theory, a majority also said that diversity strengthens the character of our nation, and that they favored allowing people who meet the requirements and have not committed any crimes to become citizens. Those beliefs can be difficult to square with the fact that, according to the poll, 26 percent of Americans would ban all migration from majority-Muslim countries, and about half support deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants, building a wall, and using the National Guard to enforce immigration laws.

To their credit, elected officials in Springfield have been quick and outspoken in challenging the false stories about their town. Perhaps more important, they’ve responded with nuance, acknowledging at once the strain on schools and hospitals that immigrants have brought to their community, the economic bounty that has come from their work in factories for Honda and Dole, and the infusion of joy and vitality into their churches. Numerous American cities now hope to emulate Springfield’s success by drawing in new immigrants.

American voters have consistently indicated that they want order at the southern border, yet many economists agree that the large amount of immigration the U.S. experienced in recent years is a major reason the economy bounced back from the COVID-related downturn faster than that of any other nation in the world. This complex picture of immigration and its implications calls for the hard work of policy making and statesmanship. Again and again, misinformation and fearmongering have only made things worse.

Setenta millas en el infierno

2024-08-06T05:00:00-04:00

Fotografías por Lynsey Addario

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Este artículo se tradujo del inglés. Lee la versión original.

Se reunieron en la oscuridad previa al amanecer. Niños con ojos llorosos se retorcían. Los adultos, cargando bebés y mochilas, permanecían firmes mientras alguien que trabajaba bajo el mando del Clan del Golfo, el cártel de drogas más poderoso de Colombia, gritaba instrucciones a través de un megáfono, ahogando temporalmente la cacofonía de los pájaros e insectos de la selva: Asegúrense de que todos tengan lo suficiente para comer y beber, especialmente los niños. Las telas azules o verdes atadas a los árboles significan que hay que seguir caminando. Las rojas significan que vas por el camino equivocado y debes dar la vuelta.

A continuación rezaron por la seguridad y la supervivencia del grupo: “Señor, cuida de cada paso que damos”. Cuando el sol asomó por el horizonte, se pusieron en marcha.

Más de 600 personas formaban parte de la multitud que se adentró en la selva aquella mañana, iniciando un viaje de unas 70 millas desde el norte de Colombia hasta el sur de Panamá. Fue un día tranquilo para los estándares locales. Procedían de Haití, Etiopía, India, la República Democrática del Congo, Brasil, Perú, Ecuador y Venezuela, y se dirigían al norte a través de la única franja de tierra que conecta Sudamérica con Centroamérica.

Durante siglos se pensó que el Tapón del Darién era prácticamente infranqueable. Los exploradores y colonizadores que se adentraban en él solían morir de hambre o sed, ser atacados por animales, ahogarse en ríos caudalosos o simplemente perderse y nunca salir. Esos peligros persisten, pero en los últimos años la selva se ha convertido en una superautopista para las personas que esperan llegar a los Estados Unidos. Según las Naciones Unidas, más de 800.000 personas podrían cruzar el Tapón del Darién este año, lo que supone un aumento de más del 50 por ciento respecto a la cifra inimaginable del año pasado. Los niños menores de 5 años son el grupo de más rápido crecimiento.

Estados Unidos lleva años tratando de desalentar esta migración, presionando a sus vecinos latinoamericanos para que cierren las rutas establecidas y denieguen visados a los extranjeros que tratan de llegar a países cercanos a la frontera estadounidense. En lugar de impedir la llegada de migrantes, este enfoque simplemente los ha desviado a través de la selva y ha trasladado la gestión de su paso a las organizaciones criminales, que se han aprovechado de la situación con entusiasmo. El Clan del Golfo, que ahora se hace llamar Ejército Gaitanista de Colombia, controla efectivamente esta parte del norte de Colombia. Durante mucho tiempo ha transportado drogas y armas por el Tapón del Darién; ahora también transporta personas.

Todos los que trabajan en el Tapón del Darién deben ser aprobados por el cártel y entregar una parte de sus ingresos. Han construido escalones en las laderas de los cerros y han equipado los acantilados con escaleras y los campamentos con Wi-Fi. Lo anuncian todo en TikTok y YouTube, y cualquiera puede reservar un viaje por internet. Hay muchos caminos. La ruta más agotadora es la más barata en estos momentos: unos 300 dólares por persona para cruzar la selva a pie. Tomar un barco por la costa puede costar más de 1.000 dólares.

Fui al Tapón del Darién en diciembre con la fotógrafa Lynsey Addario porque quería ver por mí misma lo que la gente estaba dispuesta a arriesgar para llegar a los Estados Unidos. Antes de emprender el viaje, hablé con un puñado de periodistas que lo habían hecho antes. Se habían enfrentado a la fiebre tifoidea, erupciones cutáneas, evacuaciones de emergencia y enfermedades misteriosas que se prolongaron durante meses. A uno lo ataron en el bosque y le robaron a punta de pistola. Dijeron que podíamos tomar medidas para hacer el viaje más seguro pero que, en última instancia, la supervivencia requería suerte.

[Caitlin Dickerson: La historia secreta de la política de separación familiar del gobierno de los EE. UU.]

Cada año, las autoridades panameñas retiran decenas de cadáveres de la selva. A muchos más se los traga la naturaleza. Estas muertes son el resultado no sólo de las condiciones extremas, sino también de la lógica errónea adoptada por los Estados Unidos y otras naciones ricas: que dificultando la migración podemos limitar el número de personas que la intentan. Esto no ha sucedido, ni en el Mediterráneo, ni en el Río Grande, ni en el Darién. Por el contrario, cada año llega más gente. Lo que vi en la selva confirmó el patrón que se ha reproducido en otros lugares: Cuanto más difícil sea la migración, más se beneficiarán los cárteles y otros grupos peligrosos, y más migrantes morirán.

La noche antes de partir, un padre venezolano llamado Bergkan Rhuly Ale Vidal caminaba de un lado a otro en un campamento situado en la boca de la selva, haciendo y deshaciendo las maletas de su familia. Él y su pareja, Orlimar, llevaban a sus hijos: Isaac, de 2 años, y Camila, de 8. Incluso en la oscuridad el aire era sofocante, y la mente preocupada de Bergkan daba vueltas. ¿Y si uno de los niños se cayera y se hiciera daño o cogiera fiebre? ¿Y si alguno fuera mordido por una serpiente? Al intentar salvar el futuro de su familia, ¿había calculado mal?

Bergkan Rhuly Ale Vidal y su pareja, Orlimar, se propusieron atravesar el Tapón del Darién con sus hijos, Isaac, de 2 años, y Camila, de 8. Viajaron con la prima de Orlimar, Elimar, y sus dos hijos. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

El primer día, el camino estaba lleno de piedras y enredaderas. Se entrelazaba con un río tantas veces que pronto renuncié a quitarme mis botas de goma, porque se volverían a llenar de agua minutos después. Las zapatillas de tenis de la familia de Bergkan ya estaban rotas y desintegrándose. Las colinas estaban resbaladizas por el barro y eran tan empinadas que a menudo no caminábamos sino trepábamos sobre manos y rodillas, agarrándonos de raíces destrozadas.

Pasamos por puestos que vendían botellas de agua y Gatorade, dos por 5 dólares. Porteadores, conocidos como mochileros, rodearon a la familia, pregonando sus servicios. “Llevamos mochilas, llevamos niños”, coreaban. Cobran unos 100 dólares al día y también hacen trueques con los migrantes por los objetos que llevan en sus mochilas. Orlimar intentó cambiar un par de auriculares viejos por botas nuevas, pero fue rechazada. Un par de veces, ella y Bergkan perdieron la paciencia con los porteadores y gritaron: “¡No tenemos dinero!”.

A media mañana, llegamos a la colina más dura de la ruta. Tras media hora de subida, Bergkan se lanzó al suelo, con el pecho agitado. Orlimar tiró sus pertenencias al suelo. “¿Qué llevas en esa bolsa?”, Bergkan le preguntó.

“Zapatos, sandalias”, dijo Orlimar con una voz tan suave que apenas se oía.

Bergkan le dijo que botara todo el peso que pudiera. Empezó a sacar ropa limpia. “Alguien más podrá usarla”, dijo. Pero las otras familias cercanas también estaban descargando provisiones. Las personas que tenían fuerzas para seguir caminando pasaron a nuestro lado, con la mirada fija, como si el agotamiento fuera una enfermedad que pudieran contraer con sólo mirarla.

Ilustración por La Tigre

Atravesar la selva puede llevar tres días o diez, según el clima, el peso de las mochilas y el puro azar. Una lesión leve puede ser catastrófica incluso para las personas más en forma. Los contrabandistas suelen restarle importancia al número de días que dura el viaje. A Bergkan le habían dicho que planeara para dos. A las pocas horas de viaje, empezó a darse cuenta de que no estaban ni de lejos tan adentrados en la selva como debían estarlo, lo que significaba que quizá no tendrían suficiente comida para salir.

Bergkan y Orlimar habían planeado una vida diferente. Se habían conocido de adolescentes y habían ido juntos a la universidad, Orlimar estudió enfermería y Bergkan ingeniería. Pero la economía de Venezuela implosionó en 2014, como consecuencia de la corrupción y la mala gestión. Después, la represión autoritaria del presidente izquierdista Nicolás Maduro provocó sanciones estadounidenses. El futuro por el que habían estado trabajando dejó de existir. En la última década, al menos 7,7 millones de venezolanos han huido.

Bergkan y Orlimar pasaron cinco años aceptando cualquier trabajo que pudieran conseguir, primero en Venezuela y luego en Perú, mientras veían cómo sus amigos y compañeros de clase se marchaban, uno tras otro, a los Estados Unidos. Entonces la prima de Orlimar, Elimar, que era como una hermana para ella, les hizo una oferta: Su novio, que vivía en Dallas, pagaría por la familia de Bergkan la ruta más barata para cruzar la selva, si Elimar y sus dos hijos —de 6 y 8 años— podían ir con ellos. “Nadie en Venezuela puede prestarte dinero y mucho menos esa cantidad”, me dijo Bergkan. “Era nuestro momento”. Pensaban quedarse en los Estados Unidos sólo hasta que la economía venezolana se recuperara y pudieran volver a casa.

Los migrantes desecharon ropa y equipos para aligerar sus mochilas. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

Caminamos cuesta arriba durante horas. Isaac se balanceaba sobre los hombros de Bergkan. Agarrando los pies de su hijo, Bergkan adoptó la estrategia de subir a toda velocidad un tramo de la colina durante unos 30 segundos para luego volver a echarse. Sus miembros temblaban y su rostro adquiría un ominoso tono de púrpura. “El peso que llevas está en tu mente”, dijo en un momento dado, dándose ánimos a sí mismo. Camila se paró en seco un par de veces, aguantando la larga fila de gente que había detrás de ella, y gritó: “¡Mamá, no puedo!”.

Hacia la una de la tarde, Isaac se quedó dormido, con el cuerpo flácido balanceándose de un lado a otro. “Siento como si su peso se hubiera triplicado”, dijo Bergkan a Orlimar. Se sentaron en una ladera para recuperarse. Elimar intentó despertar a su sobrino con caramelos, pero no respondía. Otros padres se pararon a preguntar si estaba bien. Bergkan sacó de su bolsa un paquete de electrolitos en polvo. Lo mezcló con agua, sacudió a Isaac y les dijo a los cuatro niños que se lo bebieran. “Los vamos a sacar de aquí”, dijo Bergkan, más para sí mismo que para los demás.

Al final, un porteador nos explicó que íbamos demasiado despacio para llegar a Panamá ese día; tendríamos que dormir en un campamento para rezagados. Cuando llegamos, vimos plataformas de madera para carpas, duchas y baños y un par de cocinas al aire libre con colombianos que servían platos de pollo y arroz, todo por un precio. La gente a nuestro alrededor empezó a comprar Wi-Fi a 2 dólares la hora para poder pedirle a sus familiares que les enviaran más dinero; las transferencias tenían una tarifa del 20 por ciento. Elimar empezó a circular por el campamento, pidiendo a otros venezolanos un préstamo para poder ponerse en contacto con su novio. Bergkan, Orlimar y sus hijos se sentaron y se frotaron los miembros doloridos. No tenían a nadie a quien llamar.

En los tres viajes que hice al Tapón del Darién en el transcurso de cinco meses, vi aparecer nuevos puentes y carreteras asfaltadas en lo más profundo de la selva, ampliar el alcance de los puntos de acceso Wi-Fi y aparecer en Google Maps puntos de referencia que antes sólo se conocían de palabra. Mirando hacia un río embravecido, me agarré a unas cuerdas que hacían que fuera más seguro —por un poco— arrastrarme por paredes de rocas escarpadas detrás de padres con bebés llorando atados al pecho.

Los guías y porteadores siguen a los migrantes en la selva con sus iPhones rodando, preguntando: “¿Te sientes bien?” y “¿Te hemos tratado bien?”. Graban sin cesar durante el primer día de marcha, cuando la gente aún es capaz de producir una sonrisa. (Incluso yo acabé en uno de sus videos.) Los cuelgan en las redes sociales, vendiendo viajes por la selva como si fueran alegres paseos por la naturaleza. El afán de lucro del cártel se ha convertido en otro factor que alimenta la migración.

Bergkan y sus hijos ascienden por un tramo montañoso del sendero cerca de la frontera de Colombia con Panamá. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

La ONU ha intentado contrarrestar estos mensajes, colocando funcionarios de migración en las estaciones de autobuses y otros puntos de control a lo largo del camino hacia el Tapón del Darién; advierten a la gente de los peligros que les aguardan e intentan persuadirles de que reconsideren su decisión. Estos esfuerzos han sido en gran medida ineficaces. “La gente viene con una visión de túnel: ‘Tengo que llegar a los Estados Unidos’”, me dijo Cristian Camilo Moreno García, funcionario de migración de la ONU en el norte de Colombia. “Darse la vuelta no es una opción”.

La segunda mañana de nuestro viaje, unas 150 personas salieron del campamento y esperaron a que saliera el sol para empezar a caminar. Bergkan y su familia no comieron nada; necesitaban conservar las pocas latas de atún y paquetes de galletas que les quedaban. Los niños seguían en pijama, la única ropa limpia que les quedaba. Al final de la cola, dos mujeres recogen los últimos pagos y entregan a cada persona una pulsera, como las que se dan en los festivales de música, para demostrar que han pagado. “Por favor, saquen el dinero para que podamos avanzar más rápido”, gritó una de ellas.

Caminamos a lo largo de una estrecha cresta con acantilados empinados a ambos lados, todos caminando mucho más despacio que el día anterior. Al cabo de hora y media, Luciano, el hijo de Elimar, se tumbó en el suelo. Los adultos se agruparon a su alrededor. “¡Quítenle el suéter, se está asfixiando!”, gritó uno. Sin decir una sola palabra, uno de los porteadores que Lynsey y yo habíamos contratado se subió al niño a los hombros, aparentemente incapaz de seguir viendo a Luciano luchar. Corrió hacia arriba y se perdió de vista. Elimar parecía derrotada, pero también aliviada por tener un niño menos del que preocuparse, al menos hasta que llegáramos al siguiente punto de parada.

Se corrió la voz de que nos acercábamos a la frontera con Panamá. Los porteadores, que llevaban dos días vendiendo sus servicios estridentemente, empezaron a callarse. Enriquecerse con la migración es ilegal en Panamá y puede acarrear una pena de más de 12 años de cárcel. La patrulla fronteriza panameña, conocida como SENAFRONT, ha estado aplicando esas leyes de forma agresiva contra las personas que venden a los migrantes botellas de agua, les llevan las mochilas o les sirven de guías. El porteador que había recogido a Luciano reveló la cicatriz en el pecho de una herida de bala que, según dijo, había sufrido en una caminata anterior, cuando los agentes habían disparado balas hacia Colombia. Dijo que debíamos estar preparados para huir. (Cuando le pregunté a Jorge Gobea, jefe de la patrulla, si sus agentes habían disparado alguna vez a través de la frontera contra guías colombianos, me dijo: “Si alguien armado se enfrenta a las autoridades panameñas, utilizamos la fuerza”).

Migrantes se reúnen en el punto de inicio de un sendero que atraviesa el Tapón del Darién. Por lo general, se necesitan entre tres y diez días para recorrer la densa selva. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

La frontera estaba marcada por una bandera panameña y montones de basura. Algunas personas posaban para fotos y celebraban a medias, inseguras de si se acercaban al final del viaje o aún estaban al principio. Orlimar se persignó y se sentó con la cabeza entre las rodillas. Elimar fue la primera en darse cuenta de que se acercaban los guardias fronterizos panameños y nos advirtió: “¡Agáchense! Agáchense”.

Lynsey y yo le deseamos lo mejor a la familia y, junto con los porteadores colombianos, volvimos corriendo montaña abajo.

Tras dejar a Bergkan y a su familia en la frontera, volvimos sobre nuestros pasos para tomar la segunda ruta terrestre principal a través del Tapón del Darién. Nos dijeron que ésta era un poco más fácil y, por lo tanto, más cara. Esta vez habíamos conseguido permiso del gobierno panameño para seguirla hasta el final.

Tras un día de caminata, dormimos en otro campamento, donde nos reunimos con un grupo numeroso liderado por una venezolana, madre de tres hijos, llamada María Fernanda Vargas Ramírez, que habia vivido con su familia en Chile. Los miembros originales se habían conocido en las redes sociales y habían recogido a más viajeros de camino a la selva, hasta que el grupo llegó a incluir a 21 personas, todas venezolanas menos una. Las personas que cruzan el Tapón del Darién tienden a desarrollar vínculos familiares con otros migrantes que encuentran por el camino. Se cuidan los unos a los hijos de los otros y se cuentan cuando hacen una pausa para descansar, asegurándose de que nadie se pierda. Pero este grupo era especialmente unido. Sus miembros compartían comida y agua libremente y decían que planeaban permanecer juntos durante todo el camino hasta los Estados Unidos.

Cuando nos acercamos por segunda vez a la frontera panameña, un guía colombiano que se disponía a dar la vuelta nos pidió a algunos de nosotros que buscáramos a una mujer llamada Cataña, a la que había llevado recientemente por el mismo camino pero que nunca había salido de la selva. Sacó su teléfono y nos enseñó fotos de ella sentada en un autobús y en lo que parecía una estación de tránsito. Parecía pensativa, sin saber qué pensar del viaje que le esperaba. “Era muy lenta, así que los demás del grupo la dejaron atrás”, dijo el guía.

“No me imagino a este grupo haciendo algo así”, repliqué.

“Ya veremos”, dijo. La gente pierde la paciencia rápidamente cuando se queda sin comida.

Susej, de 7 años, consuela a su madre, María Fernanda Vargas Ramírez, líder informal de un grupo de 21 migrantes que cruzan el Tapón del Darién. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

Esta ruta era más nueva y aún no había sido pisoteada por cientos de miles de personas. El follaje se cerraba por todos lados, haciendo que el camino fuera difícil de distinguir. Pisamos huellas de jaguar y pasamos junto a una serpiente terciopelo, la más letal de Sudamérica, enroscada en una rama cerca de nuestros tobillos. En un barranco, vimos lo que parecía ser la escena de una mala caída de una persona: una zapatilla de tenis, un cráneo y los huesos de una pierna con una venda enrollada alrededor de la rodilla, como un torniquete.

Una vez entramos en Panamá, nos enfrentamos a nuevas amenazas: robos y agresiones sexuales. La mayoría de estos ataques se producen a manos de indígenas panameños. Durante años, sus aldeas fueron saqueadas sistemáticamente por narcotraficantes y grupos paramilitares. Algunos indígenas panameños tomaron las armas en defensa propia o se involucraron ellos mismos en el tráfico. El gobierno hizo poco para protegerlos entonces y hace poco para detenerlos ahora.

Los porteadores a los que habíamos pagado para que siguieran con nosotros nos dijeron que nos mantuviéramos juntos porque se creía que los bandidos se intimidaban con grupos grandes. Más tarde nos enteramos de que eso era falso: de hecho, iban por grupos grandes, quizá porque era más eficaz que robar a un puñado de personas una por una. Nuestra ansiedad aumentó cuando pasamos junto a un par de mochilas abandonadas. Avanzamos a través de una maleza cada vez más espesa hasta que me di cuenta de que ya no había ninguna señal de camino. Un porteador acusó a otro de habernos extraviado. Empezaron a discutir, hasta que un tercero protestó: “¡Nada de gritos!”. Nos dimos la vuelta, pero se formó un cuello de botella delante de un tronco caído. Uno de los porteadores nos gritó que nos diéramos prisa: “¡Cogan a los niños y vayanse!”.

A mediodía, llegamos a un campamento conocido como La Bonga, el único lugar de la selva donde el gobierno panameño permitía vender comida y agua a los migrantes. Lynsey y yo nos reunimos con una docena de agentes de la patrulla fronteriza que nos seguían de cerca, como condición para hacer el viaje. Caminamos por el barro y los ríos durante otras seis horas antes de parar por la noche. Llovía a intervalos; los adultos, que compartían un puñado de carpas, tendrían que dormir por turnos.

Un migrante lleva a su hijo de 4 años cuesta arriba. Una manta oculta restos humanos dejados a lo largo del sendero. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

Una de las mujeres, una venezolana llamada Adrianny Parra Peña, se metió en una carpa bochornosa, con la cara cubierta de tierra. Ella y su marido habían ayudado a María Fernanda haciéndose cargo de la custodia de sus gemelos de 9 años, llevándolos a través de los ríos y subiéndolos por cuestas empinadas. Adrianny me dijo que quería tener sus propios hijos, pero que era la tercera vez en seis años que ella y su marido intentaban reasentarse, primero en Perú, luego en Chile y ahora, esperaba, en los Estados Unidos. “Estamos cansados de tanta migración”, me dijo. “Así no se puede vivir”.

A la mañana siguiente, nos enfrentamos a los obstáculos más difíciles de la ruta, una serie de paredes rocosas. Se habían tendido cuerdas en algunas de ellas, pero era imposible saber cuáles eran lo bastante seguras como para agarrarse. “Dios mío, no puedo mirar”, dijo María Fernanda cuando su hija de 7 años cruzó la roca. Se tapó los ojos y gritó: “¡Agárrate fuerte, mi princesa!”.

Cuando le tocó el turno a una niña de 8 años llamada Katherine, se resbaló y cayó al río rocoso unos 15 pies más abajo. Su madre, que iba justo detrás de ella, se quedó helada mientras uno de los porteadores saltó al agua tras ella. Katherine salió llorando pero ilesa. Reanudamos la marcha casi de inmediato, pues nadie quería pensar en el accidente más de lo necesario.

El día siguiente fue el cuarto del grupo en la selva y el decimoquinto desde que salimos de Chile. Nos topamos con un tronco caído cubierto de musgo húmedo que debíamos cruzar como una barra de equilibrio sobre un río caudaloso. Me detuve en seco, segura de que no podría cruzarlo sin resbalar. Entonces me fijé en una niña que no habíamos visto nunca y que estaba sola, con los ojos muy abiertos y sin saber qué hacer. Uno de los adolescentes de nuestro grupo se acercó, le rodeó el vientre con un brazo y la llevó al otro lado. La dejó sin miramientos al otro lado y siguió andando. Contuve la respiración y me subí al tronco.

Un guía colombiano ayuda a Susej a atravesar una pared de roca resbaladiza. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

Empezamos a ver carpas abandonadas y nos preguntamos si significaban que estábamos llegando al límite de la selva o si la gente que las había dejado simplemente estaba demasiado débil para cargar con las provisiones más básicas. Y, por primera vez, vimos a personas sentadas solas en rocas y tocones de árboles, con la mirada perdida en la distancia, aparentemente abandonadas por sus compañeros de viaje. Cruzamos un río detrás de una familia con tres niñas, dos de ellas discapacitadas. La mayor parecía tener al menos 10 años, pero estaba envuelta como un bebé en una sábana contra el pecho de su padre. Su padre resbaló y se cayó de frente, sumergiéndolos bajo el agua. Cuando salieron a la superficie, la niña tosía y gritaba. El padre se sacudió, apretó la sábana y siguió adelante. Justo al lado del camino yacía un cadáver en descomposición, escondido bajo una manta.

La docena de agentes panameños que nos seguían empezaron a pedirnos que compartiéramos lo que nos quedaba de comida, hasta que se nos acabó. Estaban agotados y no paraban de pedir descansos. El médico del pelotón se tragó una botella de solución salina. Se la habíamos dado, junto con un antídoto que había que diluir, como medida de precaución contra las mordeduras de serpiente. Pero el oficial tenía un problema más urgente: diarrea por beber el agua del río.

Hacia el mediodía, llegamos a un lugar llamado Tres Bocas, donde confluyen tres ríos y donde suelen llegar cadáveres al final de la temporada de lluvias. Muchos miembros del grupo de María Fernanda se habían quedado rezagados, al igual que la mitad de los agentes de la patrulla fronteriza. Uno de ellos nos advirtió de que aún nos quedaban por lo menos 13 millas hasta el límite de la selva, pero que, debido al terreno, nos parecerían el doble de largas. No podíamos esperar a que los demás nos alcanzaran.

Durante cuatro horas, alternamos la marcha rápida con la carrera, superando con creces lo que yo habría creído físicamente posible. Por fin salimos de las copas de los árboles y llegamos a una playa rocosa donde esperaban cientos de migrantes. Muchos decían que llevaban días sin comer.

Todos subimos a canoas motorizadas conducidas por indígenas que cobraban 25 dólares por persona. Dos horas más tarde, cuando el sol se ponía, llegamos a Bajo Chiquito, una comunidad de unas 200 personas que —a pesar de no tener agua corriente, electricidad ni hospital— el gobierno panameño ha considerado un punto de recepción oficial para las personas que logran salir del Tapón del Darién y un hito clave en medio del “flujo controlado” de migración que afirma haber logrado.

La densidad de la selva hace que sea difícil enfrentarse en un momento dado a la catástrofe humanitaria que encierra y a los numerosos fracasos políticos que llevaron a la gente hasta allí. Pero todo eso está a la vista en el Bajo Chiquito, donde los débiles sistemas de tramitación de migrantes están al límite de su capacidad.

Temblando de cansancio, subimos las escaleras que conducen al pueblo. Desde el amanecer hasta el atardecer, la entrada está abarrotada de migrantes que esperan a ser procesados por los funcionarios del gobierno. Llegan hasta 4.000 personas al día. A algunos hay que subirlos a cuestas; otros colapsan al llegar arriba.

A pesar de que Panamá tiene la renta per cápita más alta de Latinoamérica, sus indígenas viven en una pobreza casi universalmente aplastante. Los políticos panameños se apresuran a denunciar cómo la migración ha cambiado el modo de vida indígena, pero ha sido una ganancia inesperada para comunidades como Bajo Chiquito. Mientras estuve allí, la música sonaba mientras los migrantes que tenían dinero compraban comida, Wi-Fi, artículos de aseo, ropa limpia y carpas. Los residentes paseaban con fajos de dólares estadounidenses, la moneda de facto del Tapón del Darién.

Migrantes llegan a Bajo Chiquito, un punto de recepción oficial panameño para quienes logran salir del Tapón del Darién. Los migrantes acampan durante la noche en Bajo Chiquito, que no tiene agua corriente ni electricidad. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

La mayoría de los migrantes que conocí en la cola de tramitación me contaron que habían sido asaltados por bandidos en un puesto de control situado a un día de camino de la comunidad. Las mujeres dijeron que las habían manoseado; algunas dijeron que las habían penetrado digitalmente con el pretexto de buscar dinero oculto. Los agentes fronterizos panameños que se encontraban cerca no mostraron ningún interés en investigar. Los líderes indígenas afirman que han pedido ayuda al gobierno para abordar la delincuencia contra los migrantes, pero la situación parece empeorar. En febrero, Médicos Sin Fronteras publicó un informe sobre la violencia sexual contra migrantes en el Tapón del Darién, que mostraba una frecuencia más típica de zonas de guerra. Poco después, el gobierno echó a la organización de la zona.

A los lados de las casas de Bajo Chiquito, vi folletos de DESAPARECIDOS en los que aparecía la fotografía de un niño vietnamita de 9 años con cachetes grandes. Las autoridades panameñas me habían dicho que los niños que se separan de su familia en la selva son apartados hasta que llegan los adultos. Pero a los pocos minutos de entrevistar a la gente en la cola de tramitación, conocí a una niña ecuatoriana de 5 años que había llegado con un grupo de desconocidos que había conocido en la selva. Cuando les llegó el turno de ser interrogados, ninguno de los miembros del grupo admitió que no eran parientes de la niña. No tenían sus documentos, pero los funcionarios de migración les hicieron pasar.

Una larga fila de enfermos y heridos serpenteaba alrededor de la única clínica médica de Bajo Chiquito, abierta para responder a la afluencia de migrantes. En la sala de espera al aire libre —unas docenas de sillas de plástico sobre una losa de concreto— la gente vomitaba, se curaba erupciones cutáneas y heridas sangrantes y llevaba en brazos a bebés que llevaban días con diarrea. Los médicos repartían un par de pastillas para la fiebre o chorritos de crema para el sarpullido en bolsas de plástico y llamaban al siguiente paciente.

Dos mujeres llevaron a una amiga que había estado a punto de ahogarse; murmuraba y no podía levantar la cabeza. Una enfermera las condujo a una camilla y conectó a la mujer a una vía intravenosa mientras sus tres hijos miraban horrorizados. La enfermera regresó poco después y, aunque la mujer seguía incoherente, dijo a la familia que tendrían que marcharse pronto; el centro cerraba a las 5 p. m. Un par de hombres que acababan de salir de sus propias citas la llevaron a una carpa mientras gemía.

A la mañana siguiente, los migrantes volvieron a hacer cola para coger las canoas que los llevarían a un campamento más grande cerca de la carretera, desde donde partirían hacia Costa Rica. Sin saber que todos iban a conseguir un puesto, empezaron a gritarse unos a otros en distintos idiomas sobre quién había sido el primero de la fila. “Esto pasa todos los días”, me dijo un agente. Divisé a la mujer de la clínica dormida en un banco, con la piel de color gris verdoso. Su hijo menor, un niño de 8 años, le sostenía la cabeza en las piernas, acariciándole el pelo y espantándole las moscas. Sus dos hijos mayores caminaban arriba y abajo por el pueblo, con la mirada perdida y debatiendo qué hacer.

De repente, Lynsey y yo oímos gritos. Corrimos al interior de una casa rosada que alquilaba habitaciones a migrantes y encontramos a una familia numerosa de China a la que habíamos conocido en la clínica el día anterior. Llevaban días con fiebre y los habían despachado con ibuprofeno. Aquella mañana el abuelo de 70 años, Yenian Shao, no se había despertado. Su mujer y su hija yacían sobre su cuerpo, llorando y cantando.

Soldados panameños transportan el cuerpo de un migrante chino, Yenian Shao, que murió después de llegar al pueblo con fiebre. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

Los agentes de la patrulla fronteriza llamaron a un investigador local, que llegó una hora más tarde. Utilizando una aplicación de traducción en su teléfono, el hijo de Yenian intentó preguntar si el cuerpo de su padre podía ser incinerado o enviado de vuelta a China, pero no entendió la respuesta. Las autoridades embalaron el cuerpo de Yenian y lo bajaron por la ladera de una colina hasta una canoa. La esposa de Yenian fue la siguiente en entrar, junto al cadáver de su marido, seguida del resto de la familia. Los residentes barrían la basura de las calles. Al otro lado del río, llegaban los primeros migrantes del día.

En abril, volvimos a Panamá para visitar Puerto Obaldía, un tranquilo pueblo pesquero cerca de la frontera con Colombia. Sus casas, antaño de vivos colores, se han deteriorado con el paso de los años. Aquí hay pocas formas de ganar dinero. La migración solía ser una de ellas.

Durante años, los migrantes llegaban a Puerto Obaldía en barcos procedentes de Colombia. Los residentes les vendían comida, les permitían acampar y les cobraban por organizar la siguiente etapa de su viaje, ya fuera en vuelos chárter a la Ciudad de Panamá desde una minúscula pista de aterrizaje o en barcos pesqueros remontando la costa, hasta otro pueblo con una carretera asfaltada que conecta con una autopista fuera del país. Esto duró hasta 2015, cuando la migración a través del Tapón del Darién alcanzó aproximadamente 30.000 personas por primera vez en la historia y Estados Unidos se apoyó en Panamá para tomar medidas enérgicas. La patrulla fronteriza empezó a detener a residentes y a acusarlos de contrabando.

Cuando fuimos, la ciudad estaba en plenas elecciones municipales, con carteles de candidatos a la alcaldía sonrientes. Todos hacían campaña a favor de traer de vuelta a los migrantes, aunque ninguno parecía saber cómo hacerlo. Los candidatos que entrevisté, y otros residentes, reconocieron que en ocasiones la ciudad se había visto desbordada. En un momento dado, en 2015, había 1.500 migrantes acampados en esta comunidad de solo unos 600 habitantes. Pero insistieron en que la situación era mejor que la actual, tanto para ellos como para los migrantes.

Los viajes en barco nunca cesaron; los cárteles simplemente se hicieron cargo de ellos, etiquetándolos como una opción “VIP” y cobrando más de 1.000 dólares por persona. Ahora los barcos salen justo después de la puesta de sol, incluso cuando el mar está peligrosamente agitado, y a veces se vuelcan. Este año se han ahogado al menos cinco personas, entre ellas un niño afgano.

Un grupo de indígenas panameños se aventura a cruzar mares agitados. Antes de las medidas enérgicas de 2015, muchos migrantes viajaban en barco por la costa de Panamá para evitar el Tapón del Darién; hoy, sin embargo, los cárteles que controlan las rutas transfronterizas cobran precios elevados por el pasaje, lo que lleva a muchos a optar por los caminos más baratos—y más peligrosos—a través de la selva. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

“Es culpa del gobierno que hayan muerto tantos”, me dijo Alonsita Lonchy Ibarra Parra, una de las candidatas. Otro, Luis Alberto Mendoza Peñata, dijo que la comunidad había hecho un llamamiento a las autoridades, preguntando por qué los migrantes pueden descansar y reabastecerse en Bajo Chiquito pero no en su comunidad. “Escribimos cartas. No responden”, me dijo. “Si la inmigración es ilegal en Panamá, ¿por qué se permite allí, pero no aquí?”.

Pero Estados Unidos está presionando a Panamá y a otros países latinoamericanos para que repriman más la inmigración, no menos. Recientemente, Panamá aceptó 6 millones de dólares de EE. UU. para vuelos de deportación. Estados Unidos también ha instado a Panamá a construir centros de detención, como los que existen a lo largo de la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México. El nuevo presidente electo de Panamá hizo campaña con la promesa de sellar completamente el Tapón del Darién. Sin embargo, la iniciativa anunciada el año pasado por los Estados Unidos, Panamá y Colombia no surtió efecto: más de medio millón de personas lograron pasar, la cifra más alta hasta la fecha. En junio, los panameños instalaron una valla de alambre de espino en el mismo lugar por donde habíamos cruzado. Cuando pregunté a uno de nuestros guías colombianos qué iba a hacer el cártel a continuación, me contestó: “Hacer otra ruta”. Antes de que acabara la semana, alguien había abierto un agujero en la valla y los migrantes ya la atravesaban.

Más allá del Tapón del Darién, los migrantes y sus traficantes siguen encontrando formas de evitar los controles de carretera que se les ponen por delante. Recientemente, cientos de miles de migrantes han volado a Nicaragua, por ejemplo, que ha resistido la presión de los Estados Unidos para restringir los visados.

Mari Carmen Aponte, embajadora de Estados Unidos en Panamá, y otros funcionarios del Departamento de Estado que entrevisté dijeron que el gobierno estadounidense estaba tratando de equilibrar la disuasión con programas para mantener a salvo a los migrantes. Señalaron las oficinas que Estados Unidos está abriendo en toda Latinoamérica para entrevistar a las personas que solicitan el estatuto de refugiado. Estados Unidos espera aprobar este año hasta 50.000 vuelos directos al país, muchos más que en el pasado.

La clave de estos controles, según me dijeron los funcionarios, será distinguir entre verdaderos refugiados y migrantes económicos. Pero la mayoría de la gente migra por varias razones, no por una sola. Muchos de los migrantes que conocí en el Tapón del Darién sabían qué tipos de casos prevalecen en las cortes de inmigración estadounidenses y cuáles no. Estaban preparados para hacer hincapié en cualquier aspecto de su historia que tuviera más probabilidad de poner a sus hijos a salvo.

Y con demasiada frecuencia, la disuasión y la protección no son estrategias complementarias, sino opuestas. Cuando le hablé a Aponte de mi reportaje en Puerto Obaldía, donde la represión de Panamá sólo parecía entregar a los migrantes al cártel y obligar a más de ellos a adentrarse en la selva, me dijo que nunca antes había pensado en la situación en términos tan crudos. Reconoció que estaba intentando elegir “entre dos extremos, ninguno de los cuales funciona”.

En ese mismo viaje a Puerto Obaldía, me enteré de que en enero de este año, Panamá había hecho lo que parecía una concesión a los residentes, permitiéndoles abrir un pequeño campamento a unas cuatro horas a pie de la ciudad. Un grupo de oficiales accedió a acompañarnos a Lynsey y a mí hasta allí. Por el camino, un representante del departamento de comunicaciones de la patrulla fronteriza tuvo que parar varias veces para vomitar por el sobreesfuerzo. Cuando llegamos, los agentes se recuperaron mientras bebían Gatorade frío y comían un almuerzo caliente de pollo y arroz.

Nelly Ramírez, una mujer venezolana de 58 años, estaba recostada en un banco. En su segundo día de caminata por la selva con su hija y sus cuatro nietos, se había resbalado con unas hojas y se había roto la pierna, que aún supuraba pus. Otros migrantes la llevaron al campamento mientras su familia seguía caminando. Una mujer que trabajaba allí le dio comida y una hamaca. No tenía dinero y no sabía qué hacer. Pero si el campamento no hubiera existido, pensaba que habría muerto sola en la selva.

Dos días después, algunos de los mismos oficiales regresaron al campamento justo después del amanecer. No iban a investigar a los que robaban y asaltaban a los migrantes en la selva, ni a los que capitaneaban viajes mortales en barca por tarifas exorbitantes. En lugar de eso, declararon que los responsables del campamento habían estado ayudando e instigando el tráfico de personas mediante la venta de comida y Wi-Fi. Quemaron el campamento.

Soldados del control fronterizo panameño visitan un campamento improvisado a lo largo de una ruta a través del Tapón del Darién, una de varias estaciones de paso improvisadas donde los migrantes pueden descansar y comprar alimentos y suministros. Unos días después, los oficiales regresaron al campamento y lo destruyeron. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

El grupo de 21 personas de María Fernanda se dividió incluso antes de salir de la selva, cuando algunos miembros fueron sorprendidos escondiendo comida después de que todos dijeran que se les había acabado. Tras atravesar Centroamérica, los que podían permitírselo tomaron autobuses exprés hasta Ciudad de México. El resto dormía en albergues y en la calle. Una de las familias más pobres fue secuestrada en el sur de México. Enviaron mensajes desesperados al grupo, suplicando dinero. La mayoría dijo que no les sobraba nada.

Orlimar y su prima Elimar ya no se hablan. Se pelearon en una estación de autobuses de Honduras, cuando Elimar se cansó de esperar a que Bergkan reuniera el dinero suficiente para continuar. Compró boletos para ella y sus propios hijos y le dijo a Orlimar que se iban justo cuando les llamaron para embarcar.

Bergkan había estallado, dijo, acusando a Elimar de aprovecharse de él. “Le dije: ‘¡Me has utilizado como a un coyote! Como un mochilero para ayudarte con los niños’”.

En Ciudad de México, Elimar solicitó una entrevista con funcionarios de inmigración estadounidenses utilizando la aplicación CBP One de la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza de Estados Unidos, creada para agilizar las llegadas a la frontera. Pero al cabo de un mes perdió la paciencia y encontró a alguien que la trasladara a ella y a sus hijos ilegalmente a través de la frontera. Se entregaron a las autoridades de inmigración y fueron citados por la corte en 2029. Una espera tan larga no es inaudita. Ahora viven en un complejo de apartamentos en las afueras de Dallas, donde sus hijos están matriculados en un colegio público. Elimar limpia oficinas y su novio trabaja como cocinero en una cadena de restaurantes.

Una vez que la familia de Bergkan llegó al sur de México, viajaron en una serie de furgonetas llamadas combis, que son la forma más barata de viajar por las peligrosas carreteras rurales del país. Dicen que perdieron la cuenta de las veces que narcos, policías y funcionarios de inmigración mexicanos subieron a las combis y exigieron sobornos. Hacían pagar más a los centroamericanos y caribeños que a los venezolanos: todos sabían que eran los más pobres. El último grupo de hombres armados mantuvo su petición modesta: “100 pesos por persona”, dijeron, unos 6 dólares. “No es tanto”. Dieciséis días después de salir del Bajo Chiquito, la familia llegó a Ciudad de México.

Bergkan tiene ahora trabajos esporádicos; ha encuadernado libros de texto en una fábrica y ha hecho obras en un cementerio. La familia vive en un apartamento de dos dormitorios en un sótano con más de una docena de venezolanos. También han solicitado entrar a los Estados Unidos a través de CBP One y están esperando a que les llamen por su número. Podrían intentar subirse al peligroso tren conocido como la bestia hasta la frontera, donde podrían cruzar ilegalmente. Pero por ahora, Bergkan no puede soportar un solo riesgo adicional.

Cuando alguien muere en la selva, sus restos suelen ser devorados por los animales o arrastrados por un río, o se desintegran en el terreno húmedo y caluroso. Pero a veces se recupera un cadáver. Las autoridades panameñas han ofrecido cifras contradictorias sobre el número de cadáveres recuperados en la selva, que oscilan entre 30 y 70 al año. Pero parece que se trata de cifras muy inferiores a las reales. En una comunidad remota llamada El Real, Luis Antonio Moreno, un médico local, me dijo que una fosa común excavada en 2021 se había llenado rápidamente con cientos de cadáveres de migrantes, el doble o el triple de las cifras comunicadas.

Moreno dirige el destartalado hospital de El Real desde hace 18 años. Su morgue es una de varias que hay en la zona, a las que se llevan los cadáveres después de sacarlos de la selva. Moreno dijo que ha procesado los restos de personas “de todos los países y todas las edades”. Algunos llegan con sus documentos de identidad aún protegidos en bolsas de plástico que llevaban consigo. Otros son sólo huesos. Se le saltaron las lágrimas al recordar dos casos del año pasado: Uno era el de un padre y un hijo que se ahogaron juntos; sus cuerpos aún estaban abrazados cuando se los entregaron. El otro era el de un padre y su hijo que habían recibido un disparo en la cabeza.

La morgue está junto a la cocina del hospital. Moreno dijo que el hedor era a menudo intolerable, incluso antes del día de esta primavera en que descubrió que el aire acondicionado se había estropeado y los cuerpos que había dentro se estaban descomponiendo. En marzo de 2023, el Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja (CICR), que tiene un programa para ayudar a las familias a localizar a sus seres queridos desaparecidos durante la migración, construyó un mausoleo en el cementerio local con espacio para cientos de cadáveres, y se está llenando rápidamente.

Una mujer que llegó a Bajo Chiquito severamente deshidratada y apenas capaz de caminar se recupera en el único centro médico del pueblo. Gimiendo e incoherente, la mujer fue llevada a una carpa cercana cuando la clínica cerró por la noche. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

En una reciente ceremonia de enterramiento, trabajadores municipales con trajes protectores contra materiales peligrosos colocaron 12 bolsas blancas para cadáveres en las tumbas. Diez de las bolsas llevaban la etiqueta “desconocido”. Una llevaba el nombre de un hombre de Venezuela cuya familia había confirmado su identidad. Justo antes de que la última bolsa para cadáveres, que era también la más pequeña, entrara en el mausoleo, un trabajador del CICR la abrió y colocó una placa de identificación en la muñeca de la niña haitiana de 8 meses que había dentro.

Después de salir de Panamá, envié un mensaje al número de teléfono que vi en el volante del niño de 9 años desaparecido en Bajo Chiquito. El número me condujo a Bé Thị Lê, la madre del niño, que se llamaba Khánh.

Madre soltera, Bé había trabajado en la administración escolar en Vietnam, pero perdió su empleo al principio de la pandemia. Empezó a ver videos que los contrabandistas colgaban en YouTube sobre el viaje a través del Tapón del Darién; el viaje parecía factible. Varios familiares que ya habían emigrado a los Estados Unidos le enviaron dinero para que se uniera a ellos. Bé y Khánh viajaron durante casi un mes para llegar a la selva, volando primero a Taiwán, luego a Francia y después a Brasil, y después cogiendo autobuses y coches a través de Perú y Ecuador para llegar al norte de Colombia.

Bé me envió fotografías y videos que había tomado de su hijo a lo largo del viaje, posando en barcos y estaciones de tránsito. En un video, Khánh estaba sentado en la cama de una habitación de hotel y utilizaba la aplicación Duolingo para practicar inglés. Estaba practicando la frase Yes, coffee with milk please (Sí, café con leche, por favor), y acertó todas las palabras menos la última. La aplicación le pedía que la repitiera una y otra vez: please, please, please.

En la selva, avanzaban despacio y se quedaban rápidamente sin comida. Al quinto día, se adentraron en un río idéntico a decenas que ya habían cruzado. Ninguno de los dos sabía nadar, así que se unieron a un ecuatoriano llamado Juan. La lluvia que había estado cayendo durante todo el día empezó a arreciar y el agua cambió repentinamente de transparente a marrón, señal de una inundación repentina. “El agua sólo me llegaba a las rodillas, pero dos pasos después me llegaba al cuello”, me dijo Bé. Los tres se cayeron. Bé se agarró a una roca. Juan intentó hacer lo mismo, pero su mochila se llenó de agua y lo hundió. Khánh se resbaló de su agarre. Juan y Bé se agarraron a un trozo de playa y miraron hacia donde la corriente había llevado a Khánh. Khánh había desaparecido.

Bé dijo que sintió que se le iba toda la energía del cuerpo mientras permanecía sentada en la playa, muda e inmóvil. Algunos de los otros migrantes de su grupo le dijeron que habían oído a Khánh gritar “mamá” mientras se lo llevaba el agua. Le dieron el pésame y siguieron caminando. Juan acabó convenciéndola de que continuara para poder informar de lo sucedido y obtener ayuda para encontrar a Khánh. Un día y medio después, subieron las escaleras hasta Bajo Chiquito.

La Iglesia de Santa Cruz y la Soledad, en la Ciudad de México, se ha convertido en un lugar de descanso para los migrantes en su viaje hacia el norte, albergando en ocasiones a más de 1.000 personas por noche. (Lynsey Addario para The Atlantic con el apoyo de National Geographic Society)

Los agentes de la patrulla fronteriza utilizaron una aplicación de traducción para anotar el relato de Bé. Le aconsejaron que continuara hasta el campamento más grande, cerca de la autopista, para hacer otro informe. Así lo hizo y pidió a su hermano, que vive en Boston, que volara para ayudarla. Juntos regresaron a Bajo Chiquito y colocaron los carteles que yo encontré más tarde. Dice que los funcionarios de allí no le dieron ninguna indicación de que tuvieran previsto buscar a Khánh y le dijeron que no tenía permiso para hacerlo ella misma. A instancias de su hermano, Bé se entregó a las autoridades de inmigración estadounidenses para solicitar asilo, y luego viajó a Boston, donde ha estado trabajando en un salón de manicura. “Mi hijo siempre ha estado conmigo, desde que nació hasta ahora. No tengo marido, así que hay momentos en los que no estoy del todo ahí”, me dijo. “No estoy tan consciente, no estoy del todo ahí. Físicamente sigo aquí, pero emocionalmente no, porque le echo de menos”.

Sin un cuerpo que llorar, se ha obsesionado con la idea de que Khánh pudiera haber sido sacado del río o arrastrado por la corriente. Piensa que puede haber sido secuestrado por alguien en la selva, o quizá le están cuidando pero estuvo herido o no recuerda su número de teléfono. Cree que aún puede estar esperando a que vaya a buscarlo. Después de escribirle, me envió mensajes de súplica casi todos los días durante semanas. “Por favor, ayúdame a encontrar a mi hijo”.

Cuando me puse en contacto con un representante del CICR para hablar de Khánh, la organización lo añadió a la lista de migrantes desaparecidos que está tratando de encontrar. Meses después, no ha habido noticias. Bé sigue escribiéndome. “¿Qué crees sobre mi hijo?”, me preguntó hace poco. “Siempre estoy esperando noticias de mi bebé”.

Caitlin Dickerson es escritora de The Atlantic.

Seventy Miles in Hell

2024-08-06T05:00:00-04:00

Photographs by Lynsey Addario

Lee este artículo en español.

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They gathered in the predawn dark. Bleary-eyed children squirmed. Adults lugging babies and backpacks stood at attention as someone working under the command of Colombia’s most powerful drug cartel, the Gulf Clan, shouted instructions into a megaphone, temporarily drowning out the cacophony of the jungle’s birds and insects: Make sure everyone has enough to eat and drink, especially the children. Blue or green fabric tied to trees means keep walking. Red means you’re going the wrong way and should turn around.

Next came prayers for the group’s safety and survival: “Lord, take care of every step that we take.” When the sun peeked above the horizon, they were off.

More than 600 people were in the crowd that plunged into the jungle that morning, beginning a roughly 70-mile journey from northern Colombia into southern Panama. That made it a slow day by local standards. They came from Haiti, Ethiopia, India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela, headed north across the only strip of land that connects South America to Central America.

The Darién Gap was thought for centuries to be all but impassable. Explorers and would-be colonizers who entered tended to die of hunger or thirst, be attacked by animals, drown in fast-rising rivers, or simply get lost and never emerge. Those dangers remain, but in recent years the jungle has become a superhighway for people hoping to reach the United States. According to the United Nations, more than 800,000 may cross the Darién Gap this year—a more than 50 percent increase over last year’s previously unimaginable number. Children under 5 are the fastest-growing group.

The U.S. has spent years trying to discourage this migration, pressuring its Latin American neighbors to close off established routes and deny visas to foreigners trying to fly into countries close to the U.S. border. Instead of stopping migrants from coming, this approach has simply rerouted them through the jungle, and shifted the management of their passage onto criminal organizations, which have eagerly taken advantage. The Gulf Clan, which now calls itself Ejército Gaitanista de Colombia, effectively controls this part of northern Colombia. It has long moved drugs and weapons through the Darién Gap; now it moves people too.

Everyone who works in the Darién Gap must be approved by the cartel and hand over a portion of their earnings. They have built stairs into hillsides and outfitted cliffs with ladders and camps with Wi‑Fi. They advertise it all on TikTok and YouTube, and anyone can book a journey online. There are many paths through. The most grueling route is the cheapest—right now, about $300 a person to cross the jungle on foot. Taking a boat up the coast can cost more than $1,000.

[Caitlin Dickerson: There’s no such thing as a border czar]

I went to the Darién Gap in December with the photographer Lynsey Addario because I wanted to see for myself what people were willing to risk to get to the United States. Before making the journey, I spoke with a handful of journalists who had done so before. They had dealt with typhoid, rashes, emergency evacuations, and mysterious illnesses that lingered for months. One was tied up in the forest and robbed at gunpoint. They said that we could take measures to make the journey safer but that ultimately, survival required luck.

Each year, Panamanian authorities remove dozens of bodies from the jungle. Far more are swallowed up by nature. These deaths are the result not only of extreme conditions, but also of the flawed logic embraced by the U.S. and other wealthy nations: that by making migration harder, we can limit the number of people who attempt it. This hasn’t happened—not in the Mediterranean, or the Rio Grande, or the Darién Gap. Instead, more people come every year. What I saw in the jungle confirmed the pattern that has played out elsewhere: The harder migration is, the more cartels and other dangerous groups will profit, and the more migrants will die.

The night before we set out, a Venezuelan father named Bergkan Rhuly Ale Vidal paced around a camp at the jungle’s mouth, packing and repacking his family’s bags. He and his partner, Orlimar, had their children with them: 2-year-old Isaac and 8-year-old Camila. Even in the dark the air was sweltering, and Bergkan’s mind was spinning with worry. What if one of the children fell and hurt themselves, or came down with a fever? What if one was bitten by a snake? In trying to salvage his family’s future, had he gravely miscalculated?

Bergkan Rhuly Ale Vidal and his partner, Orlimar, set out to traverse the Darién Gap with their children, Isaac, 2, and Camila, 8. They traveled with Orlimar’s cousin Elimar and her two children. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

The first day, the path was studded with boulders and trip-wired with vines. It weaved across a river so many times that I quickly gave up on dumping out my rubber boots, because they would only fill again minutes later. Bergkan’s family’s tennis shoes were already ripped and disintegrating. The hills were slick with mud and so steep that we were often not so much walking as climbing on our hands and knees, holding on to mangled roots.

We passed stands selling bottles of water and Gatorade, two for $5. Porters, known as mochileros, circled the family, hawking their services. “We carry backpacks, we carry children!” they chanted. They charge roughly $100 a day, and also barter with migrants for items in their backpacks. Orlimar tried trading a pair of old headphones for new boots, but was rejected. A couple of times, she and Bergkan lost patience with the porters and yelled, “We have no money!”

Midmorning, we reached the route’s toughest hill. After half an hour of climbing, Bergkan crashed to the ground, his chest heaving. Orlimar threw down her belongings. “What do you have in that bag?” he asked her.

“Shoes—sandals,” Orlimar said in a voice so soft, she was barely audible.

Bergkan told her to dump any weight she could. She began pulling out clean clothes. “Someone else will be able to use them,” he said. But the other families nearby were also unloading supplies. The people who had the strength to keep hiking charged past us, staring straight ahead, as if exhaustion were an illness that they might catch just by looking at it.

Illustration by La Tigre

Crossing the jungle can take three days or 10, depending on the weather, the weight of your bags, and pure chance. A minor injury can be catastrophic for even the fittest people. Smugglers often downplay how many days the journey will take—Bergkan had been told to plan for two. A few hours into the trip, he began to realize that they were nowhere near as deep into the jungle as they needed to be, which meant they might not have enough food to get them out.

Bergkan and Orlimar had planned for a different life. They’d met as teenagers and gone to college together, Orlimar studying nursing and Bergkan engineering. But Venezuela’s economy imploded in 2014, the result of corruption and mismanagement. Then an authoritarian crackdown by the leftist president, Nicolás Maduro, led to punishing American sanctions. The future they had been working toward ceased to exist. In the past decade, at least 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled.

Bergkan and Orlimar spent five years taking any job they could get, first in Venezuela and then in Peru, while they watched their friends and classmates leave, one after another, for the United States. Then Orlimar’s cousin Elimar, who was like a sister to her, came to them with an offer: Her boyfriend, who was living in Dallas, would pay for Bergkan’s family to take the cheapest route across the jungle, if Elimar and her two children—who were 6 and 8—could go with them. “No one in Venezuela can lend you money, much less that amount,” Bergkan told me. “It was our moment.” They planned to stay in the U.S. only until Venezuela’s economy recovered and they could return home.

Migrants discarded clothing and gear to lighten their packs. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

We trudged uphill for hours. Isaac teetered on Bergkan’s shoulders. Gripping his son’s feet, Bergkan adopted a strategy of sprinting up a stretch of hill for about 30 seconds, then collapsing again. His limbs shook and his face turned an ominous shade of purple. “The weight you carry is in your mind,” he said at one point, giving himself a pep talk. Camila stopped cold a couple of times, holding up the long line of people behind her, and yelled, “Mommy, I can’t!”

Around 1 p.m., Isaac fell asleep, his limp body rocking back and forth. “It feels like his weight has tripled,” Bergkan told Orlimar. They sat down on a hillside to regroup. Elimar tried coaxing her nephew awake with lollipops, but he was unresponsive. Other parents stopped to ask if he was okay. Bergkan pulled a packet of electrolyte powder out of his bag. He mixed it with water, then shook Isaac awake and told all four children to down it. “We’re going to get you out of here,” Bergkan said, more to himself than to anyone else.

Eventually, a porter explained that we were moving too slowly to make it to Panama that day; we would have to sleep at a camp for stragglers. When we arrived, we saw wooden platforms for tents, bucket showers and toilets, and a couple of outdoor kitchens with Colombians serving plates of chicken and rice—all for a price. People around us began purchasing Wi‑Fi for $2 an hour so they could ask relatives to send them more money; transfers carried a 20 percent fee. Elimar began circulating through the camp, asking other Venezuelans for a loan to help her contact her boyfriend. Bergkan, Orlimar, and their children sat down and rubbed their aching limbs. They had no one to call.

In the three trips I took to the Darién Gap over the course of five months, I saw new bridges and paved roads appear deeper in the jungle, Wi‑Fi hotspots extend their reach, and landmarks that were previously known only by word of mouth appear on Google Maps. Looking down at a thrashing river, I held on to ropes that made it safer—slightly—to creep across sheer rock faces behind parents with crying babies strapped to their chests.

Guides and porters follow the migrants in the jungle with their iPhones rolling, asking, “Do you feel good?” and “Have we treated you well?” They film incessantly during the first day of walking, when people are still able to conjure a smile. (Even I ended up in one of their videos.) They post the videos on social media, selling trips across the jungle as if they were joyful nature walks. The profit motives of the cartel have become yet another factor fueling migration.

Bergkan and his children ascend a mountainous stretch of trail near the Colombian border with Panama. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

The UN has tried to counteract these messages by stationing migration officials at bus stations and other checkpoints along the way to the Darién Gap; they warn people of the dangers ahead and try to persuade them to reconsider. Those efforts have been largely ineffective. “People come with tunnel vision, like, ‘I must get to the United States,’ ” Cristian Camilo Moreno García, a UN migration official based in northern Colombia, told me. “Turning back is not an option.”

On the second morning of our journey, about 150 people filed out of the camp and waited for the sun to rise before they started walking. Bergkan and his family ate nothing; they needed to conserve the few cans of tuna and packages of cookies they had left. The children were still in their pajamas, some of their only remaining clean clothes. Two women stood at the end of the line collecting final payments and then handing each person a wristband, the kind you might get at a music festival, to show that they had paid. “Please take out your money so that we can move you along faster!” one yelled.

We walked along a narrow ridge with steep cliffs dropping off on either side, all of us trudging much slower than the day before. After about an hour and a half, Elimar’s son, Luciano, crumpled to the ground. The adults gathered around him. “Take off his sweater—he’s suffocating!” one yelled. Without a word, one of the porters Lynsey and I had hired hoisted the child onto his shoulders, apparently unable to watch Luciano struggle any longer. He dashed up the slope and out of sight. Elimar looked defeated but also relieved to have one fewer child to worry about, at least until we made it to the next stopping point.

Word spread down the line that we were approaching the border with Panama. The porters, who had boisterously peddled their services for two days, started to go quiet. Profiting from migration is illegal in Panama, and can carry a sentence of more than 12 years in prison. Panama’s border patrol, known as SENAFRONT, has been enforcing those laws aggressively against people who sell migrants bottles of water, carry their backpacks, or serve as guides. The porter who had picked up Luciano revealed the scar on his chest from a bullet wound that he said he’d sustained on a previous trek, when officers had sprayed bullets into Colombia. He said that we should be prepared to run. (When I asked Jorge Gobea, the head of the agency, if his officers ever shot across the border at Colombian guides, he told me, “If someone armed fights Panama authorities, we use force.”)

The border was marked by a Panamanian flag and piles of trash. Some people posed for pictures and celebrated half-heartedly, unsure if they were nearing the end of the journey or still at the beginning. Orlimar made the sign of the cross, then sat down with her head between her knees. Elimar was the first to notice the Panamanian border guards approaching and warned us: “Get down! Get down!”

Lynsey and I wished the family well and, along with the Colombian porters, sprinted back down the mountain.

Migrants gather at the starting point of a trail through the Darién Gap. The dense stretch of jungle typically takes three to 10 days to traverse. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

After leaving Bergkan and his family at the border, we doubled back to take the second primary land route through the Darién Gap. This one was said to be slightly easier, and cost more as a result. We had secured permission this time from the Panamanian government to follow it all the way through to the end.

After a day of hiking, we slept at another camp, where we fell in with a large group led by a Venezuelan mother of three named María Fernanda Vargas Ramírez, who had been living with her family in Chile. The original members had met on social media and picked up more travelers on their way to the jungle, until the group included 21 people, all but one of them Venezuelan. People crossing the Darién Gap tend to develop family-like bonds with other migrants they meet along the way. They look out for one another’s kids and count off when they pause to rest, making sure no one gets lost. But this group was especially close. Its members shared food and water freely and said they planned to stay together all the way to the United States.

As we neared the Panamanian border a second time, a Colombian guide who was preparing to turn back asked a few of us to look out for a woman named Cataña, whom he’d recently led down the same path but who had never come out of the jungle. He took out his phone and showed us pictures of her sitting on a bus and in what looked like a transit station. She appeared pensive, unsure what to think about the voyage ahead. “She was very slow, so the others in the group left her behind,” the guide said.

“I can’t imagine this group doing something like that,” I replied.

“We’ll see,” he said. People lose patience quickly when they’re running out of food.

This route was newer and hadn’t yet been trampled by hundreds of thousands of people. The foliage closed in from all sides, making the path hard to discern. We stepped over jaguar tracks and passed a Bothrops, the deadliest viper in South America, coiled around a branch near our ankles. In a ravine, we saw what looked like the scene of a person’s bad fall: a tennis shoe, a skull, and the bones of a leg with a bandage wrapped around the knee like a tourniquet.

Susej, 7, comforts her mother, María Fernanda Vargas Ramírez, the informal leader of a group of 21 migrants crossing the Darién Gap. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

Once we entered Panama, we faced new threats: robbery and sexual assault. Most of these attacks happen at the hands of Indigenous Panamanians. For years their villages were routinely ransacked by narco traffickers and paramilitary groups. Some Indigenous Panamanians took up arms in self-defense, or got involved in trafficking themselves. The government did little to protect them then and does little to stop them now.

The porters we had paid to continue on with us told us to stay close together because bandits were thought to be intimidated by large groups. Later, we learned that was false—they were in fact targeting large groups, perhaps because it was more efficient than robbing a handful of people at a time. Our anxiety grew when we passed a couple of abandoned backpacks. We pushed through thicker and thicker brush until I realized there was no longer any sign of a path. One porter accused another of leading us astray. They started arguing, until a third hissed, “No yelling!” We turned around, but a bottleneck formed in front of a fallen tree trunk. One of the porters shouted for us to hurry: “Grab the kids and go!”

At midday, we reached a camp known as La Bonga, the only place in the jungle where the Panamanian government was allowing people to sell food and water to migrants. Lynsey and I met up with a dozen border-patrol officers who had been assigned to tail us, as a condition of our making the trip. We trudged through mud and rivers for another six hours before stopping for the night. It rained on and off; the adults, sharing a handful of tents, would have to sleep in shifts.

One of the women, a Venezuelan named Adrianny Parra Peña, climbed into an airless tent, her face smeared with dirt. She and her husband had been helping María Fernanda by essentially taking custody of her 9-year-old twin boys, carrying them across rivers and lifting them up steep inclines. Adrianny told me that she’d wanted her own children but that this was the third time in six years that she and her husband had tried resettling, first in Peru, then Chile, and now, she hoped, the United States. “We are tired of all this migrating,” she told me. “This is no way to live.”

Left: A migrant carries his 4-year-old son up a hill. Right: A blanket conceals human remains left along the trail. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

The next morning, we faced the route’s hardest obstacles, a series of rock faces. Ropes had been strung across some of them, but it was impossible to know which were secure enough to hold on to. “Oh my God, I can’t watch,” María Fernanda said when her 7-year-old daughter crossed the rock. She covered her eyes and shouted, “Hold on tight, my princess!”

When it was an 8-year-old girl named Katherine’s turn, she slipped and fell into the rocky river about 15 feet below. Her mother, who had been right behind her, stood frozen while one of the porters jumped into the water after her. Katherine emerged crying but uninjured. We started hiking again almost immediately—no one wanted to contemplate the near miss any longer than they had to.

The next day was the group’s fourth in the jungle and the 15th since leaving Chile. We came upon a fallen tree trunk covered in wet moss that we would have to cross like a balance beam above a racing river. I stopped short, certain that there was no way I would make it across without slipping. Then I noticed a little girl we’d never seen before standing alone, wide-eyed, seemingly unsure of what to do. One of the teenage boys in our group reached over, wrapped an arm around her belly, and carried her across. He placed her down unceremoniously on the other side and kept walking. I held my breath and stepped onto the log.

A Colombian guide helps Susej traverse a slippery rock wall. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

We started seeing abandoned tents and wondered if they meant that we were reaching the jungle’s edge, or if the people who’d left them had simply been too weak to carry even the most basic supplies. And for the first time, we saw people sitting by themselves on rocks and tree stumps, staring aimlessly into the distance, apparently deserted by their traveling companions. We crossed a river behind a family with three girls, two of whom were disabled. The eldest looked to be at least 10 but was swaddled like a baby in a sheet against her father’s chest, her long limbs flopping out. Her father slipped and face-planted, dunking them underwater. When they resurfaced, the girl was coughing and screaming. The father shook himself off, tightened the sheet, and kept going. Just off the path lay a decomposing corpse, tucked under a blanket.

The dozen Panamanian officers assigned to tail us started asking us to share the last of our food—until we ran out. They were exhausted and kept wanting to take breaks. The platoon’s medic chugged a bottle of saline solution. We’d given it to him, along with antivenom that required dilution, to hold on to as a precaution against snakebites. But the officer had a more urgent problem: diarrhea from drinking the river water.

Around midday, we reached a place called Tres Bocas, where three rivers combine—and where bodies tend to wash ashore toward the end of the rainy season. Many members of María Fernanda’s group had fallen far behind, along with half of the border-patrol officers. One officer warned us that we were still at least 13 miles from the jungle’s edge but that, because of the terrain, it would feel twice as long. We couldn’t wait for the others to catch up.

For four hours, we alternated between speed-walking and running, far exceeding what I would have thought physically possible. We finally emerged from the canopy onto a rocky beach where hundreds of migrants were waiting. Many said they hadn’t eaten in days.

We all climbed into motorized canoes driven by Indigenous people who charged $25 a person. Two hours later, as the sun set, we arrived in Bajo Chiquito, a community of about 200 people that—despite having no running water, electricity, or hospital—the Panamanian government had deemed an official reception point for people who make it out of the Darién Gap, and a key landmark amid the “controlled flow” of migration that it claims to have achieved.

The density of the jungle makes it difficult to contend at any one moment with the humanitarian catastrophe it contains, and the many policy failures that led people there. But all of that is on display in Bajo Chiquito, where the feeble systems for processing migrants are stretched dangerously thin.

Shaking from exhaustion, we climbed up a set of stairs that leads into the village. From sunrise to sunset, the entrance is packed with migrants waiting to be processed by government officials. Up to 4,000 people a day arrive here. Some have to be carried up the steps; others collapse when they reach the top.

Despite Panama having the highest per capita income in Latin America, its Indigenous people live in almost universally crushing poverty. Panamanian politicians are quick to decry how migration has changed the Indigenous way of life, but it has been a windfall for communities like Bajo Chiquito. While I was there, music blared as the migrants who had money bought food, Wi-Fi, toiletries, clean clothes, and tents. Residents walked around holding wads of American dollars, the de facto currency of the Darién Gap.

Left: Migrants arrive in Bajo Chiquito, an official Panamanian reception point for those who make it out of the Darién Gap. Right: Migrants camp overnight in Bajo Chiquito, which has no running water or electricity. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

Most of the migrants I met in the processing line told me they’d been robbed by bandits at a checkpoint within a day’s walk of the community. The women said they’d been groped; some said they’d been digitally penetrated under the guise of a search for hidden cash. Panamanian border officers standing nearby showed no interest in investigating. Indigenous leaders say they have asked the government for help addressing crime against migrants, but the situation seems to be getting worse. In February, Doctors Without Borders published a report on sexual violence against migrants in the Darién Gap, showing a frequency more typical of war zones. Soon after, the government kicked the organization out of the area.

On the sides of houses in Bajo Chiquito, I saw MISSING flyers displaying the photograph of a 9-year-old Vietnamese boy with plump cheeks. Panamanian authorities had told me that children who become separated from their family in the jungle are pulled aside until the adults arrive. But within minutes of interviewing people in the processing line, I met a 5-year-old Ecuadorian girl who’d arrived with a group of strangers she’d met in the jungle. When it was their turn to be questioned, no one in the group admitted that they weren’t related to the girl. They had no documents for her, but the migration officers waved them through.

A long line of the sick and injured snaked around Bajo Chiquito’s sole medical clinic, which was opened to respond to the influx of migrants. In the open-air waiting room—a few dozen plastic chairs on a concrete slab—people vomited, nursed rashes and bloody wounds, and carried babies who’d had diarrhea for days. Doctors handed out a couple of pills for fevers or squirts of rash cream in plastic baggies, and called for the next patient.

Two women carried in a friend who had nearly drowned; she was mumbling and couldn’t lift her head. A nurse led them to a gurney and connected the woman to an IV while her three children watched in horror. The nurse returned a short while later and, though the woman was still incoherent, told the family that they would have to leave soon—the facility closed at 5 p.m. A couple of men who had just come out of their own appointments carried her to a tent as she moaned.

The next morning, migrants lined up again for canoes that would take them to a larger camp near the highway, from which they would depart for Costa Rica. Unaware that all of them would get a spot, they started shouting at one another in different languages about who had been first in line. “This happens every day,” an officer told me. I spotted the woman from the clinic asleep on a bench, her skin a greenish-gray color. Her youngest child, an 8-year-old boy, held her head in his lap, stroking her hair and swatting away flies. Her two older children were walking up and down the village, looking lost and debating what to do.

Suddenly, Lynsey and I heard screaming. We ran inside a pink house that was renting rooms to migrants and found a large family from China whom we had met at the clinic the day before. They’d had fevers for days and were sent away with ibuprofen. That morning the 70-year-old grandfather, Yenian Shao, had not woken up. His wife and daughter lay over his body, wailing and chanting.

Panamanian soldiers transport the body of a Chinese migrant, Yenian Shao, who died after arriving in the village with a fever. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

Border-patrol officers called for a local investigator, who arrived an hour later. Using a translation app on his phone, Yenian’s son tried asking if his father’s body could be cremated or sent back to China, but he couldn’t understand the response. The authorities packed up Yenian’s body and lowered it down the side of a hill into a canoe. Yenian’s wife got in next, straddling her husband’s body bag, followed by the rest of their family. Residents were sweeping the streets of trash. Just across the river, the first new migrants of the day were arriving.

In April, we returned to Panama to visit a sleepy fishing village near the Colombian border called Puerto Obaldía. Its once brightly colored homes have weathered over the years. There are few ways to make money here. Migration used to be one of them.

For years, migrants had arrived in Puerto Obaldía on boats from Colombia. Locals sold them food, allowed them to camp, and charged them to arrange the next leg of their journey—either on charter flights to Panama City from a tiny airstrip, or in fishing boats up the coast, to another village with a paved road that connects to a highway out of the country. This lasted until 2015, when migration through the Darién Gap reached roughly 30,000 people for the first time in history, and the U.S. leaned on Panama to crack down. The border patrol began arresting residents and charging them with smuggling.

When we went, the town was in the middle of a mayoral election, plastered with posters of smiling candidates. They were all campaigning on a platform of bringing the migrants back, though none seemed to know how to do so. The candidates I interviewed, and other residents, acknowledged that at times the town had been overwhelmed. At one point in 2015, there were 1,500 migrants camped in this community of only about 600. But they insisted that the arrangement was better than the one that exists now—for them and for the migrants.

The boat rides never stopped; cartels simply took them over, labeling them a “VIP” option and charging upwards of $1,000 a person. Now the boats leave just after sunset, even when the seas are dangerously rough, and sometimes they capsize. At least five people have drowned this year, including an Afghan child.

A group of Indigenous Panamanians ventures across rough seas. Before a 2015 crackdown, many migrants traveled up the coast of Panama by boat to circumvent the Darién Gap; today, however, the cartels that control the overseas routes charge high prices for passage, driving many to opt for the cheaper—and more dangerous—paths through the jungle. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

“It’s the government’s fault that so many have died,” Alonsita Lonchy Ibarra Parra, one of the candidates, told me. Another, Luis Alberto Mendoza Peñata, said that the community had appealed to the authorities, asking why migrants can rest and refuel in Bajo Chiquito but not in their community. “We write letters. They don’t respond,” he told me. “If immigration is illegal in Panama, why is it allowed there, but not here?”

But the United States is pushing Panama and other Latin American countries to crack down more on migration, not less. Recently Panama agreed to accept $6 million from the U.S. for deportation flights. The U.S. has also been urging Panama to construct detention centers, like those that exist along the U.S.-Mexico border. Panama’s newly elected president campaigned on the promise to seal the Darién Gap completely. But an effort to do just that, announced by the U.S., Panama, and Colombia last year, had no discernible effect—more than half a million people made it through, the largest number to date. In June, the Panamanians installed a razor-wire fence across the border at the same spot where we had crossed. When I asked one of our Colombian guides what the cartel was going to do next, he replied, “Make another route.” Before the week’s end, someone had cut a hole in the fence, and migrants were streaming through.

Beyond the Darién Gap, migrants and their smugglers continue to find ways around the roadblocks set before them. Recently, hundreds of thousands of migrants have flown into Nicaragua, for example, which has bucked U.S. pressure to restrict visas.

Mari Carmen Aponte, the U.S. ambassador to Panama, and other State Department officials I interviewed said the American government was trying to balance deterrence with programs to keep migrants safe. They pointed to offices that the United States is opening throughout Latin America to interview people seeking refugee status. The U.S. hopes to approve as many as 50,000 this year to fly directly into the country, far more than in the past.

Key to these screenings, the officials told me, will be distinguishing between true refugees and economic migrants. But most people migrate for overlapping reasons, rather than just one. Many of the migrants I met in the Darién Gap knew which types of cases prevail in American immigration courts and which do not. They were prepared to emphasize whichever aspect of their story would be most likely to get their children to safety.

And too often, deterrence and protection are not complementary strategies, but opposing ones. When I told Aponte about my reporting in Puerto Obaldía, where Panama’s crackdown seemed only to hand migrants over to the cartel and force more of them into the jungle, she said she hadn’t thought about the situation in such stark terms before. She acknowledged that she was trying to make choices “between two extremes—none of which works.”

On that same trip to Puerto Obaldía, I learned that in January of this year, Panama had made what seemed like a concession to the locals, allowing them to open a small camp about a four-hour hike from the town. A group of officers agreed to accompany Lynsey and me there. On the way, a representative from the border patrol’s communications department had to stop several times to vomit from overexertion. After we arrived, the officers recovered while drinking cold Gatorade and eating a hot lunch of chicken and rice.

Nelly Ramírez, a 58-year-old woman from Venezuela, sat slumped on a bench. On her second day walking through the jungle with her daughter and four grandchildren, she had slipped on some leaves and broken her leg, and it was still oozing with pus. Other migrants had carried her to the camp while her family continued on. A woman working there had given her food and a hammock. She had no money and was panicking about what to do next. But if the camp hadn’t existed, she figured she would have died in the jungle alone.

Two days later, some of the same officers returned to the camp just after sunrise. They were not on their way to investigate people robbing and assaulting migrants in the jungle, or those who captain deadly boat rides for exorbitant fees. Instead, they declared that the people running the camp had been aiding and abetting human trafficking by selling food and Wi-Fi. They burned the camp down.

Soldiers from Panamanian border control visit a makeshift camp along a route through the Darién Gap, one of several improvised way stations where migrants can rest and purchase food and supplies. A few days later, officers would return to the camp and destroy it. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

María Fernanda’s group of 21 splintered before even making it out of the jungle, when some members were caught sneaking food they’d hidden after everyone said they’d run out. After passing through Central America, those who could afford it took express buses to Mexico City. The rest slept in shelters and on the streets. One of the poorest families was kidnapped in southern Mexico. They sent desperate messages to the group, begging for money. Most said they had nothing to spare.

Orlimar and her cousin Elimar are no longer speaking. They had a falling-out at a bus station in Honduras, when Elimar grew tired of waiting for Bergkan to scrounge together enough money to continue. She purchased tickets for herself and her own kids, and told Orlimar they were leaving just as they were called to board.

Bergkan had blown up, he said, accusing Elimar of taking advantage of him. “I told her, ‘You used me like a coyote! Like a mochilero to help you with the kids.’ ”

In Mexico City, Elimar applied for an interview with American immigration officials using U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s app CBP One, which was created to streamline arrivals at the border. But she lost patience after a month and found someone to shuttle her and the kids across the border illegally. They turned themselves over to immigration authorities and were given a court date in 2029. That long a wait is not unheard-of. They now live in an apartment complex on the outskirts of Dallas, where her children are enrolled in public school. Elimar cleans offices and her boyfriend works as a cook at a chain restaurant.

Once Bergkan’s family made it to southern Mexico, they rode in a series of vans called combis, which are the cheapest way to travel on the country’s dangerous rural highways. They say they lost count of the times that narcos, police officers, and Mexican immigration officials boarded the vans and demanded bribes. They made Central Americans and Caribbeans pay more than the Venezuelans—everyone knew they were the poorest. The last group of armed men kept their request modest: “100 pesos per person,” they said, about $6. “It’s not that much.” Sixteen days after the family left Bajo Chiquito, they arrived in Mexico City.

Bergkan is now working odd jobs; he has bound textbooks in a factory and done construction in a cemetery. The family is living in a two-bedroom basement apartment with more than a dozen other Venezuelans. They have also applied to enter the United States through CBP One and are waiting for their number to be called. They could try hopping the dangerous train known as la bestia to the border, where they could cross illegally. But for now, Bergkan can’t stomach a single additional risk.

When someone dies in the jungle, their remains are usually eaten by animals or swept away by a river, or they disintegrate in the hot, wet terrain. But sometimes a body is retrieved. Panamanian authorities have offered conflicting accounts of the number of bodies recovered from the jungle—ranging from 30 to 70 a year. But these appear to be significant undercounts. In one remote community called El Real, Luis Antonio Moreno, a local doctor, told me that a mass grave dug in 2021 had quickly filled with hundreds of migrant bodies—double if not triple the reported numbers.

Moreno has operated El Real’s run-down hospital for 18 years. Its morgue is one of several in the area where bodies are taken after they are removed from the jungle. Moreno said he has processed the remains of people “from every country and every age.” Some arrive with their identification documents still protected in plastic baggies they had been carrying with them. Others are just bones. He teared up recalling two cases from last year: One was a father and son who drowned together; their bodies were still hugging when they were delivered to him. The other was a father and son who had both been shot in the head.

The morgue is next to the hospital kitchen. Moreno said the stench was often intolerable, even before the day this spring when he discovered that the air conditioner had gone out and the bodies inside were decomposing. In March 2023, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has a program to help families track down loved ones who have gone missing while migrating, built a mausoleum in the local cemetery with space for hundreds of bodies, and it’s quickly filling.

Left: A woman who arrived in Bajo Chiquito severely dehydrated and barely able to walk recuperates in the village’s sole medical clinic. Right: Moaning and incoherent, the woman was carried to a nearby tent when the clinic closed for the night. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

At a recent burial ceremony, municipal workers wearing hazmat suits placed 12 white body bags into graves. Ten of the bags were labeled desconocido, or “unknown.” One bore the name of a man from Venezuela whose family had confirmed his identity. Just before the last body bag, which was also the smallest, went into the mausoleum, an ICRC worker opened it and placed a dog tag on the wrist of the 8-month-old Haitian girl inside.

After leaving Panama, I sent a message to the phone number I saw on the flyer for the missing 9-year-old boy in Bajo Chiquito. The number led me to Bé Thị Lê, the mother of the boy, whose name was Khánh.

A single mother, Bé had worked in school administration in Vietnam, but lost her job at the beginning of the pandemic. She started watching videos that smugglers posted on YouTube of the trip through the Darién Gap; the journey seemed doable. Several relatives who had already migrated to the United States sent her money to join them. Bé and Khánh traveled for nearly a month to get to the jungle, flying first to Taiwan, then France, then Brazil, and then taking buses and cars through Peru and Ecuador to reach northern Colombia.

Bé sent me photographs and videos she’d taken of her son throughout the journey, posing on boats and at transit stations. In one video, Khánh sat on a hotel-room bed, using the Duolingo app to work on his English. He was practicing the phrase Yes, coffee with milk please, nailing all but the final word. The app prompted him to repeat it again and again: please, please, please.

In the jungle, they moved slowly and quickly ran out of food. On the fifth day, they walked into a river identical to dozens they’d already crossed. Neither knew how to swim, so they linked arms with an Ecuadorian man named Juan. The rain that had been pounding all day started to come down harder, and the water suddenly changed from clear to brown, signaling a flash flood. “The water was only up to my knees, but two steps later, it was up to my neck,” Bé told me. All three were knocked off their feet. Bé grabbed onto a boulder. Juan tried to do the same, but his backpack filled with water and pulled him under. Khánh slipped out of his grip. Juan and Bé scrambled to a patch of beach and looked out in the direction where the current had taken Khánh. He was gone.

Bé said she felt all the energy drain from her body as she sat on the beach, speechless and unmovable. Some of the other migrants in their group told her they had heard Khánh call out “Mommy” as he was pulled away. They offered her their condolences and kept walking. Juan eventually persuaded her to continue on so that they could report what had happened and get help trying to find Khánh. A day and a half later, they climbed up the stairs to Bajo Chiquito.

The Church of Santa Cruz y la Soledad, in Mexico City, has become a resting place for migrants on the journey north, at times housing more than 1,000 people a night. (Lynsey Addario for The Atlantic with support from National Geographic Society)

Border-patrol officers used a translation app to take down Bé’s account. They advised her to continue on to the larger camp near the highway to make another report. She did so, then asked her brother, who lives in Boston, to fly down and help her. Together, they returned to Bajo Chiquito and posted the signs that I later found. She said that officials there gave no indication that they planned to look for Khánh, and told her that she didn’t have permission to do so herself. At her brother’s urging, Bé turned herself over to American immigration authorities to request asylum, and then traveled to Boston, where she has been working in a nail salon. “My son has always been with me, since he was born until now. I have no husband, so there are times when I am not quite there,” she told me. “Not so conscious, not quite there. I’m physically still here, but emotionally not, because I miss him.”

Without a body to mourn, she’s become obsessed with the idea that Khánh may have been pulled out of the river or washed ashore. She thinks he may have been kidnapped by someone in the jungle, or perhaps he’s being taken care of but was injured or can’t remember her phone number. She thinks he might still be waiting for her to come get him. After I wrote to her, she sent me pleading messages almost every day for weeks. “Please help me find my son.”

When I contacted a representative at the ICRC about Khánh, the organization added him to the list of missing migrants it is trying to find. Months later, there has been no news. Bé continues to write to me. “What do you believe about my son?” she asked recently. “I’m always waiting for news of my baby.”

This article appears in the September 2024 print edition with the headline “Seventy Miles in the Darién Gap.”

There’s No Such Thing as a Border Czar

2024-08-02T09:54:00-04:00

When Laura Flores Godoy arrived at a chaotic border crossing in Zulia, Venezuela, in December, border guards stopped her and demanded a $40 bribe—more than 10 times the monthly income of many Venezuelans, thanks to President Nicolás Maduro’s disastrous handling of the country’s economy. Flores Godoy fought with the guards, she later told me, saying she was going to need every dollar she had to get her 8-year-old daughter to the United States, thousands of miles away, in buses and taxis and on foot. But all around them, she saw other families emptying backpacks and turning out their pockets, apparently willing to give up anything they were carrying in order to flee.

About a quarter of Venezuela’s population has already escaped the regime of its autocratic president, whose seemingly stolen reelection on Sunday has sent scores of protesters into the streets. Even more Venezuelans say they plan to leave if Maduro holds on to power. Like Flores Godoy, many will head for the United States.

[From the September 2022 issue: The secret history of family separation]

According to Republicans in Congress, Vice President Kamala Harris is to blame for this. They have labeled her the Biden administration’s “border czar,” claiming that she has been in charge of immigration-enforcement policies. (They have also made easily disprovable claims that the number of crossings is higher than it actually is.) But Harris is not a border czar—the position doesn’t exist. The people calling her that are doubling down on a misconception that has persisted ever since Donald Trump brought it into the mainstream: that a single person could stop the largest global migration crisis in history, if only the right hard-liner had the job.

This makes no sense. Trying to cut off migration to the United States by unilaterally changing policies that are carried out in Texas or Arizona would be like trying to stop people from competing in a marathon while standing on the finish line. This approach didn’t work during Trump’s presidency, nor would it now, because it doesn’t take into account the reasons more than 117 million people worldwide—one in every 69 on the planet—are now living on the move as they try to establish a new home.

Harris’s actual assignment in the Biden administration has been to tackle the “root causes” of migration by raising money to help improve the quality of life in countries that are sending the most people to the United States, and by liaising with their governments. Harris raised $5 billion in private-sector funds to create jobs in Central America, and migration from the region has been declining. But it’s increasing elsewhere. No American politician could change this alone, but Harris’s actual record on immigration is what bears scrutinizing.

In Venezuela, grocers stack goods in a single row at the edge of store shelves to disguise their dwindling reserves. More than half of the population lives in “extreme poverty,” and malnutrition has stunted the growth of a generation of children, killing hundreds of them. Hospitals are overcrowded and filthy. Power outages are frequent, and running water inconsistent. Decades ago, Venezuela was the richest country in South America, but an overreliance on oil made it vulnerable to market fluctuations, which have sent its economy into a tailspin over the past decade.

President Nicolás Maduro has also replicated his predecessor Hugo Chávez’s worst impulses to consolidate power and enrich his friends. Maduro has used violence to silence his critics, triggering American sanctions that have strangled the economy even more. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says it continues to document “killings, short-term enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, torture and ill-treatment, and sexual and gender-based violence against opponents of the Maduro government,” part of why 262,739 Venezuelans have entered the U.S. this year.

Ecuador was a peaceful country until about five years ago, when it fell into turmoil. This was in part the result of geographical misfortune: Drug lords throughout Latin America identified the country’s ports as prime locations from which to traffic cocaine to buyers in the United States and Europe. Gangs exploded, forging connections with brutal Mexican drug cartels and orchestrating kidnappings and extortion from inside prisons. The country’s new president, Daniel Noboa, tried to stop them earlier this year by sending gang leaders to a high-security facility. Instead they escaped, and violence surged in the streets. Armed men broke into a television station while it was on the air, demanding that the journalists warn the authorities to back down, and nearly executing some of them before police intervened.

Many Ecuadorans support Noboa’s campaign to defang the gangs by relying on “broken windows” tactics that target random citizens—particularly teenage boys—and in at least some instances torture. Ecuadorans have tried to protect themselves by turning their homes into fortresses, surrounded by metal cages. But more than 112,848 have come to the United States this year alone.

Haitians, too, have taken to barricading themselves inside, hiding out from unrelenting gang violence that has become commonplace since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. The gangs that control the capital of Port-au-Prince killed at least 3,250 people in the first five months of this year. In March, about 4,000 people escaped from Haiti’s two largest prisons. A million and a half people in the country are facing starvation.

This is only the most recent chapter in a long history of instability in Haiti that has often been made worse by outside intervention. Many of the 188,193 Haitians who have arrived at the U.S. border this year actually left Haiti years ago, and first settled in Brazil and Chile, which had eagerly taken them in to do construction work and other low-wage manual labor. The economies of those countries were decimated by the coronavirus pandemic and have not recovered, leaving Haitian immigrants out of work. That and xenophobia, which frequently turns violent, are leading many to travel north seeking a new refuge.

The American immigration debate continues to center on the southern U.S. border, while these global forces driving migration become more complex and entrenched. Smuggling networks run circles around immigration-enforcement authorities in wealthy nations that are trying to stop them.

Countries that are rarely referenced are also sending large numbers of people to the United States. An unprecedented wave of illegal migration from China has brought 62,091 people to the U.S. this year. A man from the eastern province of Anhui, whom I met recently while he was making the journey with three generations of his family, told me that the Chinese government had bulldozed his father’s home to make room for a new road, and he’d had no recourse.

[Caitlin Dickerson: The ‘permanently orphaned’]

A similar number of Indians have crossed into the United States this year, 67,391. I interviewed the relatives of a young Sikh man from Punjab who disappeared in the jungle between Colombia and Panama on his way to California. They explained that he had earned an MBA, but was shut out from decent jobs because of his religion, and that Indian police had kidnapped and beaten him because he supported the Sikh independence movement. And Ukrainians continue to flee the war with Russia in large numbers: 54,000 have entered the United States this year, a figure that will likely double by December.

It appears that no amount of concertina wire, or even deportations, will reverse these trends. And of course American diplomatic efforts alone cannot solve instability abroad. But the U.S. contributes to many of these crises—a good reason for our elected officials to pay attention to them. Most of the guns being used to terrorize people in Ecuador and Haiti were manufactured in the United States. American sanctions have worsened the exodus from Venezuela. And people throughout Latin America have become casualties of our insatiable appetite for cocaine and other drugs.

In almost a decade of covering immigration, I’ve come to understand that the decision to migrate usually takes place over the course of years, as people wait to see whether conditions will improve and debate—subconsciously or aloud with their friends and family—what to do if they don’t. I’ve heard countless stories about the factors that people weigh before deciding to leave home. Rarely do these narratives include even a passing reference to American immigration policy. And almost never—it should be noted—do they mention anything resembling an American dream. “Hijo de puta, Maduro!” (“son of a bitch, Maduro!”) is how one Venezuelan I met, while hiking up a brutal mountain in the South American jungle, put her feelings about having to migrate. Most people on the mountain said they wanted to return home as soon as they had saved a little money and their countries had become stable enough to do so.

When Donald Trump was president, his immigration advisers, led by Stephen Miller, ran a wrecking ball through the federal bureaucracy. Miller may have been the closest thing to a border czar that Americans have ever seen. His most aggressive attempt to shut down immigration, in 2017 and 2018, involved separating migrant children from their parents. After, border crossings increased even more, exceeding 1 million the following year.

A more sophisticated view of the United States border that took into account where people come from and why might better serve the interests of Americans who are desperate for a coherent response to the issue from their government. A border czar, by contrast, would do very little.

Celine Dion May Never Perform Again

2024-07-18T07:31:00-04:00

Early in the documentary I Am: Celine Dion, you see a cellphone video of Dion lying on her side on the floor of a hotel room, moaning softly. She seems to want to speak but can’t get out any words. Her body is stiff, her position unnatural. In the background, you can hear a man calling the concierge and asking for “the fire department, please, and a rescue unit.” Another man tells Dion to push into his hand if she’s in pain, but it’s unclear if she can hear him. The scene would be difficult to watch even if its subject weren’t one of the most famous musicians in the world.

Soon after, the film cuts to archival footage of Dion onstage in Las Vegas, in a bedazzled gold jacket, belting her first No. 1 hit in the United States, “The Power of Love.” She winks at the camera, rocks to the beat, and pumps her arms, looking completely in her element. Her love of performing seems innate—the same delight shines in her eyes in clips of her as a teenager, learning English and launching her career in Quebec, and in later decades, as her star rose. The Las Vegas scene reminds us not only how much we’re missing Dion during her hiatus from performing, but also how much she is missing us.

The documentary was filmed over several years as a team of caregivers have worked to address Dion’s rare illness: stiff-person syndrome, an autoimmune disease that affects just one or two out of every 1 million people and is not well understood. Large parts of the body go rigid during spastic episodes. Many people with the condition develop anxiety and agoraphobia. Dion says that her lungs are fine, but everything outside them is rigid, which makes singing impossible. A few moments of creative editing are overly stylized, which is a shame because her condition needs no dramatization. It is degenerative and can be fatal.

[Read: The early internet, explained by one weird Celine Dion fan site]

She reveals in the film that she’s been ill for 17 years. She developed tricks to distract audiences when she felt her vocal cords spasm in the middle of a concert—pointing the microphone toward the crowd so they would sing for her, or tapping on it to make it seem like there was a problem with the audio system and not her voice. She canceled shows, feigning ear and sinus infections, and took Valium daily. She pretended for as long as she could, which seems so exhausting that you have to wonder if it made her condition worse. She is 56 now. In the documentary, she doesn’t talk about wanting to be well; she talks about wanting to sing.

(Amazon MGM Studios)

Dion shares nothing in common with young performers who lament how hard it is to be famous; she seems to live for her fans. They “give me lots of energy—lots and lots,” she says in an early interview in French. “Being onstage is the gift of show business.” She is the rare superstar who you feel somehow deserves her international fame and the wealth it has given her. Good for her, I thought as I watched her tour a warehouse full of designer gowns she has worn to major events, and walk through the Vegas compound where she lives, surrounded by enormous paintings, sculptures, Louis Vuitton trunks, and antique furniture that looks like it came from Versailles. Her twin tween sons are endearing too: One takes a break from playing in a decked-out video-game room to listen attentively when she comes in for a visit, proffering a degree of eye contact that I’ve never witnessed in a 13-year-old. Later, one of the twins jumps out of his seat to thank a butler who hands him a milkshake from a tray.

Okay, that last one was pushing it. But these are children whose father died when they were 5 and whose mother may well be dying now. And Dion was in no way destined for a life of abundance. She was the youngest of 14 children, all of whom, she says, smiled sweetly and pretended to like the carrot pie that their mother once made them for dinner because it was all they could afford.

From the first time she took the stage, as a 5-year-old performing at a family wedding, Dion was a star. She shot anxious looks at the guitarist behind her whenever he missed a note, because she—we are meant to understand—would never miss a note. That night, her mother gave her the advice that she would channel into her illness: If something goes wrong in a performance, pretend that everything is fine and keep going. At the age of 12, Dion was discovered by a manager, René Angélil, whom she later married. She began recording albums in English and French, eventually going multiplatinum in both. Most Americans knew her voice before her name because she sang the theme to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, released in 1991. But soon her name was everywhere.

To be clear, I’m nowhere near Dion’s biggest fan. I missed her first major album in the U.S., The Colour of My Love, on account of being 4 when it came out. But her next, Falling Into You, had me on my knees when I was 6, belting in my best friend’s bedroom about nights when the wind was so cold that my body froze in bed, and days when the sun was so cruel that all the tears turned to dust and I just knew my eyes were dryin’ up forever. We couldn’t wait for scenes like this to play out in our own lives, and though—it turns out—they weren’t terribly realistic, Dion’s heartful crooning about fairy-tale love connected with people of every age, perhaps especially those who were old enough to know better.

My real appreciation for Dion grew in 2018, when I saw her perform in Vegas. I had agreed to attend with some friends, expecting a silly night of singing along to her hits like I was a kid again. It was the best live performance I had ever seen. Her singing was stunning, of course. She ad-libbed frequently, taking pleasure in showing off her range, and her voice was warm and supple. But she was also funny. Very funny. She broke into stand-up between songs and showed no desire to be perceived as cool, hunching over to maximize the range of her hip thrusts while strumming an air guitar. She told stories that drew gasps, like that she’d originally refused to sing “My Heart Will Go On”—she didn’t feel like doing another movie theme song—until Angélil persuaded her to record a demo track so that he could sell it to another artist. The demo was so good that she never had to record it again, and he never had to shop it around to other artists; it’s the version we know.

That night, Dion didn’t even have to mention her late husband—or their love story, which still makes me, along with many of her fans, a bit uncomfortable because of how young she was when they met—for us to know when she was singing about him, maybe even to him. She cried, and so did we.

[Read: Celine Dion saved the ]Billboard Music Awards

Since canceling a Vegas residency in 2021, Dion has mostly been isolated in her home, trying to get better. “If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl,” she says in the documentary. The skin on her face now hangs forward and down, as if she’s exhausted by the power and duration of her own grief. Describing what this hiatus has been like, she performs her sadness almost too perfectly, because she’s Celine.

The documentary captures the first time in years that she had managed to record anything that even vaguely resembles her former self, the song “Love Again,” for a rom-com by the same name that came out in 2023. But her emotions trigger another spasm. Tightness in her big toe spreads to her ankle. Her therapist gets her to lie down, and soon her whole body is seizing. Her face darkens and contorts, and her upper lip twitches. The team treating her discusses when to call 911. But she comes to after being given Valium and benzodiazepine, ashamed of having lost control. To cheer her up, her therapist plays one of her favorite songs—“Who I Am,” by Wyn Starks. She responds with the glee of a child who’s been handed a chocolate bar, mouthing the words and punching the air, pretending she’s onstage again.

The way the documentary was advertised suggested that it was going to be a more typical, will-she-or-won’t-she-make-it countdown to Dion’s big comeback, and I went in expecting it to end with the announcement of another residency or tour. But the film makes clear that she is nowhere near being able to hold a concert. She seems to nap for most of the day and says that just walking is painful. Her spasms are triggered by strong emotions, but they also happen at random. By the end, I didn’t care if Celine Dion would ever be able to perform again; I just hoped she would live. But I also understood that, for her, there is no difference.

‘I Am Pleasing to Everyone’

2024-06-24T13:41:00-04:00

Netflix is out with a new delectable documentary series, America’s Sweethearts, about tryouts for the 2023 Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Why should I, someone who’s never reviewed anything other than a book, be the one to review it? For starters, a sick day granted me the ability to guzzle it down in a single seven-hour stretch. The show scratched just about every itch that I have: As a former cheerleader who spent much of this year in physical therapy to address a chronic back injury, I find watching people hit moves with a precision that I can no longer even approximate to be deeply satisfying. I also love a documentary that examines American culture without saying it’s doing that—even better if it doesn’t seem to know it’s doing that. America’s Sweethearts is a show about the cult of femininity, of which I consider myself—depending on the day—a subject or a survivor. Plus, growing up in rural California in the 1990s, at the height of NFL monoculture, I had a babysitter from San Antonio named Lisa who drove a Ford Bronco with the Cowboys logo emblazoned on the side, and had two Chihuahuas at home named Troy and Emmitt. I had to watch this show.

It begins with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders director, Kelli McGonagill Finglass, and choreographer, Judy Trammell—themselves former DCCs, as squad members are known—culling through video auditions of writhing young women. The candidates have clearly spent their lives not just dancing but also performing as soloists, which is an altogether separate skill. Finglass’s and Trammell’s favorites possess beauty and superior technique—those are the price of entry—but also a preternatural quality that makes people want to look at them. And I did.

[Read: Cheer is built on a pyramid of broken bodies]

As they make their way through the process, the rookie and veteran candidates—any of whom can be cut—form deep relationships impossibly fast. Even the ones who have known each other only a few weeks call each other best friends. They bawl when their best friends are cut from the team. The most uttered phrase on the show must be “I love you so much!,” often appearing in scenes with lots of runny mascara and a group hug.

Similar moments no doubt played out among the girls I cheered with in high school, but many of us had been in dance classes together since we were in tiny tutus. I grew skeptical of such displays of emotion during my brief, embarrassing stint in a college sorority. I was dealing with freshman-year loneliness, and so my mom pushed me to rush. But when I found myself at the center of groups of shrieking women declaring their love for one another while throwing themselves into meaningless activities, I felt more alone than ever. My sorority, like the Cowboys cheerleaders, had only a handful of women of color—just enough to head off any accusations of you-know-what—and we mostly kept to ourselves. I got out of there as fast as I could.

The football games, when they begin on the show, provide a high of their own. Being a cheerleader at a football game is thrilling not because you’re the center of attention—you’re not; everyone is watching the game—but because you’re in a place where everyone has gathered for a particular purpose, and you have a role to play. The cheerleaders talk about how putting on their uniform feels like putting on a cape and becoming a superhero. Weirdly enough, I feel the same way about covering the news now. We’re all still gathered for a particular project, except now it’s reporting on the state of American democracy. The outcome is uncertain, but I have a job to do; it gives me a sense of direction—one that feels to me now, of course, like a much more important one.

Just before this, I’d watched a different documentary: Manufacturing Consent, featuring Noam Chomsky, who’d been in the news. He talks about sports as a way to control the masses, and group activities such as sororities and cheer squads as a way to breed subservience. America’s Sweethearts seems to reinforce his theories completely. The show’s characters are content, soothed by the strict hierarchy of their world. They hate to disappoint, but when they do, their path back into their coaches’ good graces is clear: Perform better, and you will be absolved. The satisfaction this provides is so deep that squad alumnae—some in their 70s—return to the stadium to perform together annually. They take the performance deadly seriously, and many cheerleaders say on the show that their years on the squad were the best in their entire life.

By contrast, the life of a godless, skeptical grump, which Chomsky pushes, and to which I am more naturally inclined, is a bit of a bummer. As I’ve aged, I’ve come around to the fact that birthdays are worth celebrating, that it’s okay to take a day off from your mission, that being grateful—as the women on the show remind you they are incessantly—isn’t necessarily naive. And I’m much happier for it. So who’s right, Chomsky?

All of that happiness comes with a lot of hard work. Those who earn a spot on the team do so because they learn to push through pain, put off having surgery, survive on four or five hours of sleep in order to take on extra jobs that supplement their marginal incomes.

And because they are women, they must look perfect while performing all of this work. They must be windup dolls of positivity. At one point in the show, a binder that is said to contain the answers to the question “What is a DCC?” flips open. I had to hit “Pause” to read and reread one page, which sums it up thusly:

WHAT AM I … ?

I am a little thing with a big meaning * I help everybody * I unlock doors, open hearts, do away with prejudices—I create friendship and good will * I inspire respect and confidence * Everybody loves me * I bore nobody * I violate no law * I cost nothing * Many have praised me, none have condemned me * I am pleasing to everyone * I am useful every moment of the day

“I cost nothing”—that one got me. The cheerleaders are expected to keep smiling as they’re given impossible standards to uphold. They’re told that their kicks aren’t high enough (which sometimes seemed to be a euphemism for the fact that Coach Finglass just didn’t like them), then that they look like they’re trying too hard and need to relax, then that they look like they have low energy, then that they need to eat more to fuel their bodies, then that they’re not skinny enough. More makeup. Too much makeup. Too blond. Not blond enough. The most scathing criticism must be met with a smile and a “Yes, ma’am.”

My favorite character was Reece Allman. She was by far the best dancer, impossibly alluring, whether she was cheering or during the Latin ballroom-inspired dance that she did for her tryout. (After her tryout, a judge asked to pause the competition for a moment so that he could fan himself.) In interviews in her bedroom, she said that her dancing abilities were a gift from God and that she wanted to use them to bring him glory. She said that she didn’t want people to see her at all when she was onstage—that she wanted them to see Jesus. But when she is onstage, you cannot look anywhere else. And you cannot—or at least I could not—see Jesus.

Reece also explained that she was engaged to the first boy she’d ever talked to, an absolute sweetie who got a job at a power-washer dealer, selling parts in Dallas so that they can live together. He said that Reece, seemingly one of the most confident dancers alive, shook visibly from fear the first time he put his arm around her. This story made it all but clear that they had not yet consummated their love. How could someone who had never gotten laid ooze so much sexuality? That contradiction is the Cowboys-cheerleader way.

[Read: Why don’t more people consider competitive cheerleading a sport?]

According to reviewers, this is the worst show by Greg Whiteley—the creator of Cheer and Last Chance U—because it goes too easy on its characters. Daniel Feinburg wrote in The Hollywood Reporter that it was “frustratingly caught up in the mythos surrounding its subjects,” and that it felt “more like a well-polished commercial than an eye-opening documentary.”

Feinburg is right, but what makes the show interesting is how easy it is to see beneath the veneer. In the last episode, Sophy Laufer accuses a cameraman of grabbing her butt while she’s dancing. The police get involved but decide that there’s not enough evidence to charge the man. But the scenes are revealing anyway, because Coach Finglass’s reaction—raised eyebrows and surprise that the cheerleader wants to press charges—suggests that she might not have been as supportive of Laufer if the cameras had not been rolling. (She also describes the incident differently from the filmmakers, saying the police had determined that no assault occurred.)

Laufer is the youngest one on the squad—only 19. She’s interviewed right after it happened, wearing gobs of makeup, which makes her look only more childlike. But in this moment, she becomes a woman, not through her appearance but by forgetting about the rule book (I am pleasing to everyone) and reporting the incident so that something similar—or worse—doesn’t happen to anyone else. She steps out on her own, and the other girls have no choice but to support her. “We’re so proud of you,” they declare in a pile of hugs.

The ‘Permanently Orphaned’

2023-12-11T10:08:00-05:00

On Friday, a federal judge in Southern California certified a settlement between the government and thousands of migrant children and parents who were rent from one another by the Trump administration as part of its immigration crackdown. Judge Dana Sabraw’s decision ended a years-long legal battle, ultimately giving the families almost everything they’d asked for: The settlement bars U.S. immigration authorities from taking children away from their parents under almost any circumstance for eight years and provides the families who were separated the right to return and seek asylum in the U.S., as well as government-funded legal representation, and temporary housing and health care. The ACLU, which litigated the case on behalf of separated families, called it the most important settlement in the organization’s 103-year history. But Sabraw underscored in his decision that family separations never should have happened, and that no number of resources can undo the harm they caused.

As with most of the hearings in the case over the past six years, the gathering on Friday began with an eerie counting of kids. The government explained that since its last “status update,” it had found or resolved the cases of four noncitizen children, bringing the number of those whose parents have been altogether lost by U.S. authorities down to 68. Urging the government to keep looking, Sabraw repeated a line he has said many times: “Every child who is not found is permanently orphaned.”

Judge Sabraw took the hearing as an opportunity to reflect on what he called “one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country.” He recalled that when the case first landed in front of him in February 2018, he could hardly believe the ACLU’s allegations against the government, because they sounded “sensational.” The case was initially brought on behalf of a single mother known as Ms. L, and at the time, Trump-administration officials were insisting that family separations were exceedingly rare. But two months later, I obtained an internal government document showing that, in fact, at least 700 separations had taken place by that point. I published an article revealing that bureaucrats within the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services had been working behind the scenes against the wishes of their superiors to try to reunite the families. (Their efforts were mostly in vain; recordkeeping was so poor that it was almost impossible to track down separated parents and children within the labyrinthine, multi-agency system of shelters and detention centers where they were being held.) After reading the article, Sabraw went into court and asked the government lawyers whether my reporting was accurate. They acknowledged, albeit circuitously, that it was.

While the case wound through the courts without garnering much public attention for several months, more and more families were being separated. Donald Trump was panicking about high numbers of border crossings, for which he was being lambasted on Fox News. He largely blamed Kirstjen Nielsen, his Homeland Security secretary, for failing to control the border. There was heavy pressure to expand the separation program, which began in El Paso, Texas, nationwide. When Nielsen agreed, and the national separation policy known as Zero Tolerance was announced, separations increased drastically as it went into effect across the entire southern border. Audio of sobbing separated children begging to be returned to their parents was leaked to ProPublica from a detention facility in Texas. It sparked a bipartisan backlash so strong that Trump ended the policy with an executive order in a matter of days.

The scope of the damage became clearer when Judge Sabraw determined that the separations had been unconstitutional and ordered the government to reunify all of the separated families—and the government could not. For most of the time that the separations were under way, no official effort was made to keep track of relatives, who were shipped to government facilities across the country or deported abroad. Immigration authorities deported more than 800 parents without their children—having promised some of them, falsely, that if they agreed to their own deportations, their children would be promptly returned. A congressional report found that at least 18 children under 2 were taken from their parents for periods ranging from 20 days to 6 months. One of the youngest was a four-month-old baby from Romania whose parents had brought him to the U.S. to seek asylum. By the time his parents, who were uneducated and deeply poor migrant laborers, got their child back he had spent the majority of his life in U.S. custody.

In a 2022 investigation for The Atlantic, I found that all of these problems and more had been foreseen, yet Trump’s top immigration-enforcement officials went ahead with family separations anyway. U.S. Marshals Service officials tried to warn Trump’s Justice Department in advance that courtrooms and detention centers would become critically overwhelmed. And documents obtained in a multiyear lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act show that the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties had anticipated “permanent family separation” and “new populations of U.S. orphans” months before family separations were expanded.

Another major impediment to reunifications was that the policy’s strongest proponents, including Matt Albence, a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, actively worked to prevent them from happening. “We can’t have this,” Albence wrote to his colleagues after learning that some reunifications had occurred. (Last year, Albence was offered a new job in federal immigration detention, as an executive at a private prison company that contracts with his former employer.) Others who pushed for family separations under Trump continue to enjoy successful careers in and adjacent to federal immigration enforcement. None has had to testify in the many ongoing court cases of families seeking damages for their separation, and the depositions that have taken place in those cases are sealed.

Recently, I spoke with a DHS official who had worked with colleagues to try to block family separations from happening, and, when those efforts failed, to reunite the families as quickly as possible. (She asked for anonymity because she did not have permission to speak to the press.) “It took forever” to reach this point, she said. “I guess I was expecting to feel more joy about it, and instead I felt more frustration … There’s still so many families with unresolved issues. It didn’t bring the closure I thought it would.”

The Specter of Family Separation

2023-12-04T05:59:00-05:00

Editor’s Note: This article is part of “If Trump Wins,” a project considering what Donald Trump might do if reelected in 2024.

Lee este artículo en español.

Almost as soon as Donald Trump took office in 2017, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement were dispatched across the country to round up as many undocumented foreigners as possible, and the travel ban put into limbo the livelihoods of thousands of people from majority-Muslim countries who had won the hard-fought right to be here—refugees, tech entrepreneurs, and university professors among them. The administration drew up plans for erecting a border wall, as well as an approach to stripping away the due-process rights of noncitizens so they could be expelled faster. These changes to American immigration policy took place in the amount of time that it would take the average new hire to figure out how to use the office printer.

Within days of Trump’s election, his key immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, was already gathering a group of loyal bureaucrats to start drafting executive orders. Civil servants who were veterans of the George W. Bush administration found the proposals to be so outlandishly impractical, if not also harmful to American interests and perhaps even illegal, that they assumed the ideas could never come to fruition. They were wrong. Over the next four years, lone children were loaded onto planes and sent back to the countries they had fled without so much as a notification to their families. Others were wrenched from their parents’ arms as a way of sending a message to other families abroad about what awaited them if they, too, tried to enter the United States.

[From the September 2022 issue: The secret history of the U.S. government’s family-separation policy]

If given another chance to realize his goals, Miller has essentially boasted in recent interviews that he would move even faster and more forcefully. And Trump, who’s been campaigning on the promise to finish the job he started on immigration policy, would fairly assume if he is reelected that harsh restrictions in that arena are precisely what the American people want. “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” he declared during a speech in Iowa in September, referring to 1954’s offensively titled Operation Wetback, under which hundreds of thousands of people with Mexican ancestry were deported, including some who were American citizens.

Trump and other key fixtures of his time in office have refused to rule out trying to reinstate family separations. They have been explicit about their plans to send ICE agents back into the streets to make arrests (with help from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the National Guard), and finish their work on the wall. They say that they will reimpose the pandemic-related expulsion policy known as Title 42, which all but shut off access to asylum, and that they will expand the use of military-style camps to house people who are caught in the enforcement dragnet. They have laid out plans and legal rationales for major policy changes that they didn’t get around to the first time, such as ending birthright citizenship, a long-held goal of Trump’s. They’ve floated ideas such as screening would-be immigrants for Marxist views before granting them entry, and using the Alien and Sedition Acts in service of deportations. Trump and his advisers have also made clear that they intend to invoke the Insurrection Act to allow them to deploy the U.S. military to the border, and to use an extensive naval blockade between the United States and Latin America to fight the drug trade. That most drug smuggling occurs at legal ports of entry doesn’t matter to Trump and his team: They seem to have reasonably concluded that immigration restrictions don’t have to be effective to be celebrated by their base.

The breakneck pace of work during Miller’s White House tour was periodically hampered by worried bureaucrats attempting end runs around him, or by his most powerful detractors, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, whispering reservations into the president’s ear. But Trump’s daughter and son-in-law have left politics altogether, and Miller used Trump’s term to perfect strategies for disempowering anyone else who dared to challenge him. As for job applicants to work in a second Trump administration, Miller told Axios that being in lockstep with him on immigration issues would be “non-negotiable.” Others need not apply.

Those who choose to join Trump in this mission to slash immigration would do so knowing that they would face few consequences, if any, for how they go about it: Almost all of the administration officials who pushed aggressively for the most controversial policies of Trump’s term continue to enjoy successful careers.

The speed of Trump’s work on immigration can obscure its impact in real time. This is why Lucas Guttentag, a law professor at Stanford and Yale and a senior counselor on immigration issues in the Obama and Biden administrations, created a database with his students to log and track the more than 1,000 immigration-policy changes made during Trump’s years in office. Most remain in place. This is worth dwelling on. Trump’s time in office already represents a resurgence of old, disproven ideas about the inherent threat—physical, cultural, and economic—posed by immigrants. And if Trump does return to office, this moment may qualify less as a blip than an era: a period like previous ones when such misconceptions prevailed, and laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act and eugenics-based national-origins quotas ruled the day.

[Caitlin Dickerson: America never wanted the tired, poor, huddled masses]

Returning Trump to the presidency would reopen wounds that have barely healed in the communities he has said he would target immediately. Recently, I stood outside a church in the Northeast that caters mostly to undocumented farmworkers, with a Catholic sister who oversees the parish’s programming. As we stood in the autumn light, I remarked on the picturesque scene around her place of worship and work. She replied by pointing in one direction, then another, then another, at the places where she said ICE agents used to hide out on Sunday mornings during the Trump administration, waiting to capture her congregants as they left Mass to go about their weekly errands at the laundromat and the grocery store.

Beyond the emotional impact of Trump’s return, the economy could also face a pummeling if the number of immigrant workers, legal and otherwise, were to drop. In a November 2022 speech, Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, detailed the harm from COVID-related dips in immigration, which left the country short an estimated 1 million workers.

America’s rightward shift on immigration is part of a global story in which Western countries are, in general, turning against immigrants. But the world tends to look to the United States as a guide for what sorts of checks on immigration are socially permissible. A new Trump administration would provide a pretty clear answer: just about any.

An anything-goes approach to immigration enforcement may indeed be what the country is left with if Trump succeeds in the next general election. “The first 100 days of the Trump administration will be pure bliss,” Stephen Miller told Axios, “followed by another four years of the most hard-hitting action conceivable.”

This article appears in the January/February 2024 print edition with the headline “The Specter of Family Separation.”

Radio Atlantic: How Germany Remembers the Holocaust

2023-03-30T06:00:00-04:00

Two years ago I published a book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America. The book explores how different historical sites across the United States—including monuments, memorials, and museums—reckon with or fail to reckon with their relationship to the history of slavery. After the book came out, one of the main questions I got from readers asked where public memory was being engaged with more proactively and thoughtfully than what we so often see here in America. I would frequently invoke Germany, citing the work it had done to memorialize the Holocaust. But there came a point where I realized that I was citing the memorials in Germany without having spent any time with the memorials in Germany.

So I traveled to Germany to examine its landscape of memory for myself. I visited the homes from which Jewish families were taken, the train stations from which they were deported, the concentration camps where they were held, the crematoria where bodies were burned.

I had conversations with Jewish Germans as well as Americans living in Germany, in an effort to understand how we might place the way America memorializes slavery in conversation with the way Germany memorializes the Holocaust.

What I learned is that the story of German memorialization is complex, multifaceted, and still evolving. Just like the story of America’s.

-Clint Smith

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The following is a transcript of the episode:

Caitlin Dickerson: So what did you expect to find in Germany? I mean, were you essentially going to pick up lessons for the U.S.? Were you starting to become a little bit skeptical of Germany as this ideal for reckoning and atonement? I mean, what did you have in mind as you set out on this trip?

Clint Smith: I think in part, I went to Germany to put it in conversation with the process of memorialization here in the United States.

Dickerson: I’m Caitlin Dickerson. Today on Radio Atlantic, staff writer Clint Smith on the Holocaust, America’s legacy of slavery, and what it means to memorialize tragedy.

Smith: So it wasn’t necessarily to compare and contrast as much as it was an attempt to say, okay, “What’s happening in Germany, what’s happening in the United States? In what ways are these processes in conversation with one another?” America in so many places fails to properly memorialize and remember and account for its relationship to the history of slavery; what’s a place that does this well?

Dickerson: So where in Germany did you go to try to figure this out?

Smith: I went to a range of different places, including the House of the Wannsee Conference, which is this idyllic mansion outside of Berlin where the leaders of the Nazi party got together to outline and plan the contours of the Final Solution.

Clint: I’m here standing outside of the House of the Wannsee Conference. Already by the time they met here, people had been killed in mass murders—but this is where they would plan out how they would kill millions more. There’s a profound sort of juxtaposition between the scenery and the idyllic nature of it, and the terrible thing that was planned inside of it. Behind it is this lake with sailboats that are slowly passing by. The water sort of lapping against the shore. Can hear birds and wind chimes. It’s a strange thing. It’s a very strange thing.

Smith: If you could say your name and your position...

Deborah Hartmann: Okay. So my name is Deborah Hartmann.

Smith: And one of the people that I spoke to when I went to the House of the Wannsee Conference was Deborah Hartmann, who is the director of that museum. And one of the things we talked about in particular that I found really fascinating was the need to focus on not only the victims of the Holocaust, but also the perpetrators.

Hartmann: I think we have to learn something about the perspective of the perpetrators and not only about the perpetrators but also about the bystanders, and all those who were in a way involved. And this could be the neighbor who was not a member of the Nazi party, but who was just hanging around and had a nice view out of the window seeing neighbors being deported.

Smith: Which was so many people.

Hartmann: Yeah, of course.

Smith: It’s interesting, because I think part of what this place does, in some ways, is humanizes both the victims and the perpetrators.

Hartmann: Yes. And it is important, I think—because, of course, they were human beings as well. And, you know, in the afternoon, people who participated in the mass shootings wrote nice letters to their families at home.

Smith: They killed people in the morning, and wrote letters to their family and their children in the afternoon.

Hartmann: Exactly. And this is maybe what’s so difficult for us to understand. And to live with it.

Dickerson: She’s challenging, in a few different ways, the oversimplification of narratives around the Holocaust. And also: Humanizing the perpetrators is worth doing, because actually, human beings perpetrated this. It wasn’t fantastical characters of evil, but actual human beings.

Smith: Yeah; I think one of the things that she takes very seriously in her work is ensuring that we are not falling into the trap of reducing the people who are part of this history into two-dimensional caricatures of themselves.

Hartmann: And you know, then you suddenly see that the history is much more ambivalent, and it’s much more complicated. And today, I think that the Germans actually are very proud of what they have achieved in terms of confrontation, like with the past and coming to terms. But I think it becomes difficult when they feel—I don’t know, the term in English—maybe relieved. You understand what I mean?

Smith: Mm hmm. Yeah.

Hartmann: Because then it can turn into a very problematic direction.

Smith: This idea that “We’ve already done it.”

Hartmann: I mean, here you can see: Okay, this is still very challenging, I think, for Germans. Even in the fourth generation today. How can it be okay that my family was somehow involved in those atrocities?

Deidre Berger: I mean, there wasn’t really a confrontation until the ’60s, when the young generation started asking their parents what they did during the war.

Smith: Deidre Berger is an American woman who’s lived in Germany for many years. And both in America and in Germany, she has been deeply involved in Jewish organizations and Jewish advocacy groups, to ensure that Jewish people and Jewish history are accounted for. And the two of us got together on a chilly day in October at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in downtown Berlin.

Berger: And we had the Nuremberg trials in the late ’40s. There were the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt in the early/mid-1960s. And still, most perpetrators were never accused or tried or charged. And there was the attitude of “Let’s leave it behind us.”

This—this went right into the heart of families, and it tore families apart. And so they’d rather not talk about it. When I came to Germany in the mid-1980s, there was not much of a confrontation within families. So it took a very long time. A lot of the international climate was such that I think more of an understanding evolved, at least in the German political elite, of the importance of confronting the Holocaust, and also on the grassroots level.

So the 1960s is when the grassroots movement started in Germany to try and understand better what had happened in my town, what happened to the Jews. And there were quite a lot of good-minded Germans who pursued projects, who invited former members of their community who were Jewish, back to their towns. And out of this movement grew the idea that there needed to be a national monument. So it was a complicated conglomeration of interests that led to the establishment of this monument. I don’t know that there was one government who said, “You have to do this,” but it was an understanding in Germany that this was important to have a national symbol of recognition of German guilt for what had happened.

Dickerson: Clint, what does this monument—this symbol of recognition that she’s describing—actually look like?

Smith: So, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a 200,000-square-foot memorial at the heart of downtown Berlin. And when I say at the heart of downtown Berlin, I really mean it. It’s almost as if a massive memorial to slavery was placed in front of the White House. That’s sort of the first thing you notice. And it’s made up of more than 2,000 stone columns that are of different heights. And as you walk through the stone columns, it’s almost maze-like. And the ground beneath the columns rises and falls like waves, and so at different points within the space, you know, you have different amounts of light. So sometimes as your body moves down, it’ll get darker and darker.

And I think it’s a place that is meant to be haunting and overwhelming. But what’s also true is that it is a place that has become such an enmeshed part of the landscape. People are driving to work, people are walking their dogs, people are running. There are people who have obviously come there to engage with the space. And so I would see people who were crying and holding hands, sort of gently touching the stones as if it could sort of transport them back to this moment. There were also small children who were playing hide-and-seek—and so different people engage with the space in fundamentally different ways. And I think in some ways, that’s inevitable. But it’s also something that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

There are many people who’ve commented that the very name is too passive—the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. That it doesn’t talk about who did the murdering. There are those who say it’s too abstract. There are no names on the columns, but there are also those who believe that its size and its scale and its scope is unlike anything that any other country has ever done.

Smith: Do you remember when you first came here—when you first saw it and experienced it?

Berger: Yeah, when it was opened in 2005. I find it…very cold. And I’m not sure that I need this much concrete detail with all these stones to grasp the dimensions of this crime. But different people have different reactions. I think in the Jewish community, my reaction was fairly widespread. But on the other hand, I mean—I think there was a certain acceptance and degree of relief, almost, that there was a Holocaust monument that was finally erected in the heart of Berlin, very close to the German Parliament.

Smith: Oh, the German Parliament.

Berger: And that’s just on the other side, basically. And that was meaningful.

Smith: There’s nothing that Japan has built to account for Japanese imperialism of this scale. There’s nothing that the United States has built to account for a history of Indigenous genocide or chattel slavery. You know—this sort of thing at this size doesn’t exist anywhere [else]. And so different people fall on different ends of the spectrum about whether they think it is a space that is a net positive or not, whether it’s a place that does more good or more harm. And that was one of the things that I learned a lot from my conversation with Deidre Berger and others.

Berger: I’m not complaining, I think it is quite remarkable. Let’s keep in mind that in the center of a major city, a country acknowledges its guilt at genocide.

Dickerson: Berger talks about this desire already in the 1940s among some to move on and to forget. I’m interested in that impulse. I remember interviewing David Romo. He’s a historian of the U.S.-Mexico border and actually found that it was the U.S. Border Patrol that began using Zyklon B in its own gas chambers. That helped to inspire German scientists, who then brought them to Germany, turned up the potency of—of the solution and—and used it to kill Jewish people. He talked about amnesia and about forgetting as a response to shame—on both the sides of the perpetrators, but also the victims. It sounds like you’ve been thinking a lot about just how dangerous that can be.

Smith: Yeah;, I think that we have seen the direct implications of that. I mean, here in the United States, there was a very intentional, proactive attempt to distort and push aside the story of chattel slavery and what the Civil War was fought over. The idea perpetuated by the widows and the sisters and the mothers—who lost their husbands, brothers, who lost their sons, their nephews—that grief animated a desire to tell a very different story of who these men were and what they had died for. Because they didn’t want to remember their loved ones as someone who died perpetuating evil. They wanted to remember them with love. They began to talk about how slavery wasn’t central to the Civil War. How even if slavery had been central to the Civil War, it wasn’t even that bad; it was a benign or even a civilizing institution. And even if someone wasn’t actively perpetuating and disseminating misrepresentations about the Civil War and slavery, what there was was silence about it. And it’s interesting, because in Germany, there was its own version of silence after the end of the war—and it took generations before these monuments would be built. And this silence was eradicated.

Dickerson: Clint, you saw a lot of memorials while you were in Germany. Which ones stuck out to you most?

Smith: I remember the first time I saw the Stolpersteine, which are the brass stones that are placed in front of the former residences, or places of worship or places of work, of people who were persecuted and killed by the Nazis.

It was started by a guy named Gunter Demnig in 1996, whose own father was a Nazi soldier. And in many ways, this art project that he began seems to be a part of his own contrition.

And so these brass stones, these 10-by-10-centimeter stones, are placed in front of these homes—and they have the birthday, the death date, the deportation date of the people who were taken from these homes. This is the largest decentralized memorial in the world. And you’ll be walking down the streets of Berlin, and there will be two stumbling stones. And then you walk a little further down, and in front of another home there will be four. And in front of another home there will be seven. In front of another home, there will be 12.

Smith: Where are you from originally in the States?

Jennifer Neal: Uh, short answer: We moved a lot.

Smith: Got it.

Neal: But I tell everybody I’m from Chicago, because that’s the last American city I lived in before I left.

Smith: I met up with Jennifer Neal, who is an author and a journalist who lives in Berlin, calls Chicago home, and is a Black woman who is thinking about how Germany memorializes its past and is comparing it to how the United States is remembering its own past. And one of the things we talked about was the Stolpersteine and how prevalent they are, and in so many ways how effective they are.

Neal: I love that memorial, because it doesn’t give anybody an excuse to forget. And if you are one of those people who lives in the building that was formerly occupied by that victim, you see that every single day. And I think it’s one of the most brilliant memorials anywhere.

Smith: Hmm. Do you think that we could do something like that in the States? You know, I can’t help but wonder what a version of that tied to slavery would look like.

Neal: I mean, I’d be extremely curious to see what that looked like. I think in general, the United States hasn’t done jack shit enough to atone for slavery. I mean, where to begin? I think that’s the real question. I would love to see something along the lines of the Stolpersteine done in the United States, but I wouldn’t want it to stop there. I would want to see memorials like that all over the South and the North as well, to commemorate how slaves escaped from the South and went and moved to the North. I would love to see memorials like that to commemorate the victims who were forcibly sterilized in the United States.

I would love to see memorials to the victims of white flight and the housing crisis in Chicago. I would love to see memorials to the Great Migration. I would love to see memorials of all sorts like that. Will that happen? That’s where the question mark is.

Smith: It’s almost like if we did it, it would be the entire street—you know, because it’s 250 years. I mean, in front of Monticello. Like, what would that do to somebody when they entered that place?

Neal: Well, yeah; that’s a really powerful idea, because I know that a lot of the plantations have been rebranded as, like, venues for weddings and parties. And there are still so many people who don’t seem to understand or know why the U.S. Civil War was fought to begin with. And these plantations don’t really seem to be advertising what happened there. I think it’s also part of the problem.

Smith: But not everybody’s a huge fan of the stumbling stones or how ubiquitous they are. And Deidre Berger has her own complicated feelings about them.

Berger: Why should we be stepping on the memories of the victims? If anyone it should be perpetrators, although I’m not one for revenge or vindication, I don’t think we should step on people, whatever kind of person they were. There should be plaques on the wall. Why aren’t they? Because most of the owners of buildings wouldn’t accept, even to this day, a plaque saying Here’s where a Jewish family lived. And that’s the truth. And that’s not what people talk about. There’s a lot of reverence sometimes for this project that I’ve encountered, and people who work on it—sort of “I’ve done my penance now.” There’s enormous projections with this project on dead Jews.

Would it work in the States? I just don’t know. I’m not sure that it would, because there’s not a feeling of penance in the same way—of responsibility, unfortunately. And the time span [since the Civil War] is much further. I mean why shouldn’t we? But it’s the reality.

Dickerson: So, Clint, you went to Germany to better understand how it remembers the Holocaust and to put these two very different sets of circumstances in conversation with one another. In the United States, because of the very specific way in which slaves had been extracted from their homes and then were further separated from family, people pretty much know, right—as much as you and I do—that we’re the descendants of enslaved people. And the story often ends there.

You don’t have people who can walk around and tell their relatives’ very specific story from the beginning. I wonder if that plays a role. And can you talk about some of the other differences between the ways that they remember this past?

Smith: Yeah. You know, the most obvious is that there are still people who are alive today who survived the Holocaust. Another big difference is that in Germany there just aren’t many Jewish people left. Less than 200,000 Jewish people in Germany—which is less than a quarter of a percent of the population. And that’s very different than in the United States, where there are 40 million Black people.

Dickerson: Right. And I wonder, you know, did you come away thinking that anything like what’s happened in Germany could happen in the United States? And what would that take?

Smith: I think in the United States, it’s a question of scale, right? I mean, there are people in different parts of the United States who are building memorials and museums that are meant to directly account for this history. You know, I think about the Witness Stone Project in Connecticut, that was started by a group of middle-school and high-school educators who, along with their students—having been inspired by the Stolpersteine in Germany—would put down similar stones in places where enslaved people lived. And they’ve been doing that project for several years. It is happening.

And I think what is true is what I think is true in Germany: that the most meaningful monuments don’t necessarily have to be state sanctioned. I think so often, the most important memorials and museums and monuments are the ones that are created in local communities. And it is ordinary people who will be the ones to help this country see its history with clear eyes and honesty, even when this country tries to look the other way.

Dickerson: I mean will you continue to invoke Germany in your talks, and will you continue to think of it as a type of model for remembering the past?

Smith: I will continue to invoke Germany, though with a level of nuance and an additional acknowledgment of its complexity than perhaps I did before. And my hope is to continue thinking about this question. I’ve kind of become obsessed with how people remember the past.

Dickerson: I even wonder if this nuance makes it feel more accessible to Americans. You know, it’s not the case that all of German society rallied around these memorials, that everybody agreed that it was the right way to go. There’s something that makes it feel more accessible as a source of inspiration, knowing that it was fraught work. It still is today. And yet, you know, it’s been done again and again.

Smith: Yeah, it makes it feel less distant; it makes it feel less unachievable. You know, we’re in a moment right now where reckoning looks different than it has at any other point in my lifetime. Which isn’t to say it has been linear or perfect, or without backlash. But even amid the backlash, I think [it] still reflects an opportunity and a moment that is ripe for these sorts of memorials and monuments to come about.

Dickerson: Thanks so much, Clint. I really appreciate this conversation.

Smith: Thank you so much. I appreciate you having it with me.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by A.C. Valdez and Theo Balcomb, with editing from Claudine Ebeid. Thanks to producer Ethan Brooks and our engineer, Rob Smierciak. I’m Caitlin Dickerson.

The Family-Separation Files

2022-12-31T07:00:00-05:00

The Atlantic is publishing a collection of key internal government documents related to the Trump administration’s family-separation policy, known as Zero Tolerance. The records informed the reporting of my cover story on how it came to be and who was responsible. Our hope is to introduce greater transparency around a policy that gravely harmed thousands of families and whose development and intent were concealed from the public for years. During the Trump administration, more than 5,000 migrant children were taken from their parents as part of a dubious and ineffectual strategy to deter migration across the southern border. Hundreds remain separated today.

[From the September 2022 issue: “We need to take away children”]

These records showcase, among other things, government officials’ attempts to mislead the public; inconsistent and sometimes nonexistent record keeping, which to this day means that a full accounting of separations does not exist; efforts to extend the length of time that children and parents were kept apart; and early and repeated internal warnings about the policy’s worst outcomes, which were ignored.

As you will see, some of the records are marked “pre-decisional,” “deliberative,” or “attorney-client privileged” in an attempt to exempt them from federal disclosure requirements and ensure they would never become public. The Atlantic obtained them only through extensive litigation.

The Atlantic’s records, combined with others secured by the House Judiciary Committee, the progressive nonprofit group American Oversight, and separated families themselves, have been organized and tagged for future use. The collection is far from complete, and many of the documents still contain redactions. However, we hope that this database will prove a useful tool for those engaged in research and documentation of family separations, and that the body of publicly available information will continue to grow.

Jump to Initial separations, Deliberations leading up to the implementation of Zero Tolerance, Zero Tolerance Policy, Misleading the public, Investigations by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Problems with family reunification and attempts to thwart it, Known instances of separation, Collections, Further reading

Initial Separations (Pilot Programs)

In the spring of 2017, Jeff Self, the Border Patrol chief in the El Paso Sector, which includes New Mexico and parts of Texas, quietly launched a regional program to start referring migrant parents traveling with children for prosecution, which would require those families to be separated. This strained resources throughout the immigration system, including at the Department of Health and Human Services, which took custody of the children. Federal officials would later call the program a “pilot” and use it as a model for expanding the practice nationwide. Some early separations also occurred in Yuma, Arizona, under a separate initiative.

Family Separation Directive for Texas Border Patrol stations in the El Paso Sector*

Family Separation Directive for New Mexico Border Patrol stations in the El Paso Sector*

Department of Health and Human Services official: “They are discovering more separations that were not reported.”

HHS officials contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement seeking help locating the parents of detained separated children.

HHS official reports that the Department of Homeland Security “is working on a family separation policy again.”

El Paso Sector “After Action Report” summarizing the results of separations that occurred there in 2017

Jonathan White, head of the HHS program housing children, reports, “We had a shortage last night of beds for babies.”

HHS officials report, “We suspect that there are other [unaccompanied children] being separated from parents.”

Border Patrol official Gloria Chavez tells the acting agency chief Carla Provost that the El Paso Sector has been separating families for more than four months. Provost calls for separations to stop.

Provost: “This has been ongoing since July without our knowledge … It has not blown up in the media as of yet but of course has the potential to.”

Border Patrol official Scott Luck asks colleagues Chavez and Hull, “Why are we just hearing about it?”

A DHS official requests a Border Patrol report on initial separations in El Paso to present to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

The acting deputy chief of the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector tells Chavez, inaccurately, that family separations there lasted only two to seven days, and suggests, despite evidence to the contrary, that many people presenting themselves as families at the border were in fact unrelated.

Deliberations Leading Up to the Implementation of Zero Tolerance

At a February 14, 2017, interagency meeting, immigration-enforcement officials presented a nationwide plan to separate families as an immigration deterrent. Afterward, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services—the agency that would be charged with caring for separated children—pushed back against the plan while scrambling to prepare. The plan was also leaked to the media, after which Homeland Security officials began to assert publicly that the idea had been abandoned. In reality, during and after regional separation programs were implemented in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, the nationwide plan was still being pushed aggressively by leaders of the immigrant-enforcement agencies, as well as by Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s chief immigration adviser, and Gene Hamilton, a confidant of Miller’s who worked at DHS and the Department of Justice.

Invitation to the February 14, 2017, meeting

HHS official Jonathan White’s internal summary of proposals discussed at the February meeting

HHS official: “DHS stressed” in a meeting that the “overall intent of the actions is to serve as a deterrent.”

White asks enforcement officials for more information about plans to separate families.

List of attempts by White to inquire and raise red flags about plans to separate families

HHS March 2017 report: Children who would be separated “tend to skew heavily toward tender aged”; separations “could be considered a human rights abuse,” cause “a myriad of international legal issues,” and “increase the risk of human trafficking.”

HHS official: DHS is “looking to expand” family separations despite a complaint filed with the inspector general. (Original complaint here.)

In an internal memo, federal officials describe family separation as a “short term” solution to be implemented in the “next 30 days.”**

December 2017 correspondence between DHS officials: “Announce that DHS will begin separating family units.”

December 2017 DHS policy proposal: “Parental Choice of Detention or Separation”

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan plans to formally recommend family separation: “I do believe that this approach would have the greatest impact.”

Zero Tolerance Policy

Zero Tolerance memo signed by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s follow-up Zero Tolerance memo with additional instructions

El Paso Sector initial implementation guidance

El Centro Sector implementation guidance

Del Rio Sector implementation guidance

Scott Lloyd of Health and Human Services asks McAleenan and Acting ICE Director Tom Homan for a meeting to discuss the implications of Zero Tolerance.

Border Patrol officials warn of “repercussions” for prosecutors who declined to participate in separations.

The Justice Department’s Gene Hamilton touts a dramatic increase in prosecutions under Zero Tolerance.

“A lot of parent separation cases” are “missing information,” an HHS official reports.

HHS officials note inconsistent documentation and tracking issues.

An HHS official reports, “There are a bunch of tender age girls” stuck in Border Patrol stations; “this is caused by the policy decision to separate kids from their families as a deterrent.”

A magistrate judge in Tucson, Arizona, inquires about separation and reunification processes.

After a Brownsville, Texas, magistrate demands a list of separated families and their locations, a Border Patrol agent jokes, “I might be spending some time in the slammer.”

Yuma Border Patrol Sector reports: Resources are strained by “meal preparation, and feeding” detained families.

Amended Big Bend Sector guidance

Orders to halt separations following President Trump’s executive order reversing course on Zero Tolerance in response to public outcry

A Customs and Border Protection official notes failures to properly document separations of 0-to-4-year-old children.

Zero Tolerance Charts

Though a full accounting of the family separations that took place during the Trump administration does not exist, these internal government charts offer some insight into the nature of those that were recorded. For example, Homeland Security officials have often suggested that some of the individuals separated under Zero Tolerance were actually “false families,” or that separated parents were guilty of more serious crimes beyond the misdemeanor of illegally crossing the border, to justify taking their children away. But the first chart in this list makes clear that 2,146 of 2,256 separated parents who were referred for prosecution between May 5 and June 20, 2018, were charged only with the misdemeanor. During the same period, 137 parents were charged with the felony of having crossed the border illegally more than once, while only two were presented with “other charges.” The second chart notes that over those weeks, at least 251 children younger than 6 were separated from their parents, along with 1,370 children ages 6 to 12, and 1,272 ages 13 to 17.

Zero Tolerance Separation datasets May 5-June 20, 2018

Internal Border Patrol “Prosecution Initiative Update” charts from July 1 to July 7, 2018

Undated list of reasons for some separations

Misleading the Public

Below is a small sampling of instances when government officials, members of congress, reporters and community groups sought information about a noticeable rise in family separations. Despite these inquiries, for more than a year, Department of Homeland Security officials denied that the agency’s treatment of families had changed, suggesting that business was proceeding as usual and that families were not being separated any more than in the past.

“The El Paso Federal Defender’s Office has registered an increase in the separation of children and parents,” an immigrant advocacy group wrote to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ahead of an August 2017 meeting. “What is the current policy on family separation?”

Border Patrol officials scramble to respond after a meeting with Representative Beto O’Rourke’s office, in which family separations were inadvertently disclosed.

Months into the El Paso Sector separation initiative, Border Patrol official Aaron Hull tells the ICE official Phil Miller, “We don’t like to separate families.”

Houston Chronicle reporter Lomi Kriel asking whether the Border Patrol’s policy on family separations had changed, and receiving unclear answers in response. (Kriel’s article here)

Jonathan White of the Department of Health and Human Services asks Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan and Acting ICE Director Tom Homan why his agency is receiving larger numbers of separated children than in the past. Homan does not respond. McAleenan does not disclose that separations have been underway to White.

A communications official at DHS seeks guidance on how to respond to inquiries from the media and immigrant advocacy groups.

DHS official to reporters: “We ask that members of the public and media view advocacy group claims that we are separating women and children for reasons other than to protect the child with the level of skepticism they deserve.”

In response to another inquiry, HHS officials decline to respond, and then confirm that more than 700 children have in fact been separated.

In internal emails, DHS officials push back against the story about 700 separated children, claiming inaccurately that “the actual number is much lower.”

Investigations by Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL)

Quarterly meeting agenda: “There are reports of family separation cases at the border.”

A report on an investigation into complaints of family separations cites “inconsistency,” “inadequate protocols,” and “lack of collaboration.” It recommends the creation of an interagency working group, a “Family-Member Locator System,” and other tools to prevent prolonged separations and to ensure that families are eventually reunified.

A summary of an investigation into 950 complaints about family separations anticipates “permanent family separation” and “new populations of US orphans.”

CRCL staff seeks information about the “enormous volume of matters alleging inappropriate family separations.”

Cameron Quinn, the head of CRCL, emails Customs and Border Protection Commissioner McAleenan to raise concerns about reports of family separations.

Quinn tells McAleenan that CRCL has received “over 100 recent allegations of separations.”

CRCL staff notes the Border Patrol’s failure to document some separations.

Quinn forwards allegations of coercion and abuse of separated parents to McAleenan and Acting ICE Director Ron Vitiello. (Original complaint found here)

Problems With Family Reunification and Attempts to Thwart It

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official named Matt Albence insists that the “expectation is that we are NOT to reunite the families” and proposes ways to avoid such reunifications, such as moving children away from the border faster.

“We can’t have this,” Albence writes about reunifications.

Albence and other ICE and Border Patrol officials lament that some families have been reunified, calling it “a fiasco” and “not the consequence we had in mind,” which “obviously undermines the entire effort.”

Reunifications, Albence insists, are not “going to happen unless we are directed by the Dept to do so.”

Reports that reunification forms were given to parents in languages they did not understand

Correspondence on harried reunification efforts

An employee at a company contracted to care for separated children tells colleagues, “ICE will be stopping all reunifications … due to limited bed space.”

Known Instances of Separation

In the federal lawsuit Ms. L. v. ICE, lawyers representing the federal government turned over the most complete list of family separations that exists. The ACLU shared that database with The Atlantic after redacting details such as names and dates of birth, which could be used to identify individual parents or children who were affected by the separation policy.

Collections

Here, documents are organized into collections based on key criteria, such as year, location, federal agency, and the key players involved.

Congress Can’t Even Do This One Thing

2022-10-27T11:06:00-04:00

The moment was practically unrecognizable in modern politics. Just four years ago, Democrats and Republicans in Congress seemed to agree on something. And not on an innocuous topic like fixing roads and bridges, no—they came together on one of the most controversial subjects in the history of American political debate: immigration.

When the American public learned definitively in June 2018 that government officials were forcibly taking children away from their parents as part of a misguided scheme to discourage migration across the southern border, legislators started clamoring to take action. They were responding to the sounds of toddlers crying out for their parents, who, by then, were likely hundreds of miles away, lost in a labyrinthine federal detention system. Suddenly, some of the fiercest conservatives in Congress, including Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas and members of the House Freedom Caucus, introduced a flurry of bills calling for the same thing that leading Democrats were demanding: to immediately end the use of family separation as an enforcement tactic, and to outlaw it for good.

In years of covering immigration, I had never seen this kind of bipartisan agreement. Casey Higgins, who was serving at the time as the top immigration-policy staffer for Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the House, said party lines that seemed to have been etched in stone suddenly faded. “All the politics and things like that went out the window,” she told me recently, “because any parent who was hearing about this or reading about this was sick.”

So confident were these legislators in their position that Cornyn told reporters Republican staffers were finalizing a single bill that they planned to “hotline” to the president’s desk within days. Hotlining is one of the fastest ways to get a bill signed into law. It allows the full Senate to vote on a piece of legislation without any floor debate, but is only rarely invoked, because it requires unanimous consent. Cornyn felt sure he had it.

I think you know where this is going.

Cornyn and his colleagues’ enthusiasm dimmed a day later, when President Donald Trump gave in to public pressure, signing an executive order halting separations. (Actually, the order was written so quickly that it was inscrutable, but immigration-enforcement authorities knew what Trump meant for it to say, so they mostly complied.) One week later, a broader Republican-led immigration bill that also outlawed family separation (replacing it with prolonged family detention, which Democrats loathe) failed spectacularly in the House. Republicans had gone back to disagreeing not only with Democrats, but also with one another.

Talk of family separation “pretty much disappeared after that,” Higgins said, even though Trump began backing away from his own executive order almost immediately after signing it. He pushed to revive the practice throughout his administration’s final 18 months. But Republicans didn’t want to challenge the president, Higgins said, “and nobody wanted to talk about it anymore in an election year.”

Democrats kept the issue alive a little while longer, emphasizing it during the 2020 campaign cycle. But their interest, too, seemed to sputter and die within Joe Biden’s first year in office. Jerry Nadler, the House judiciary chair, did not even reintroduce his own bill to outlaw separations in the current Congress. A separate bill that was introduced to provide monetary support and legal residency for the separated families has not been voted on, nor have most Democratic leaders signed on as co-sponsors, which would signal that it’s a priority.

“We’ve still got a long way to go to prevent this from happening again,” Joaquin Castro, the Texas congressman who introduced the House bill to provide recourse to separated families, told me recently, sounding exasperated. “There has been no accountability for the people in the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies who orchestrated this inhumanity.”

To say that Congress has failed to fulfill its duties when it comes to addressing immigration in general, and family separation specifically, is a profound understatement. The last major overhaul of immigration policy was more than 25 years ago. And although nearly every aspect of the system is troubled, the issue has become so toxic in Washington that large legislative compromises are considered too risky to vote for. They rarely make it out of a single chamber, because they are packed with concessions from both sides, which legislators fear will prompt backlash from voters. (The last reform bill “gave everyone a reason to vote no, rather than to vote yes” was a line I heard frequently from both parties in my reporting.) But just as sticky today are narrow bills addressing issues that most Americans agree on.

The dysfunction is not unique to any one group. Conservative Republicans are so caught up in gamesmanship that they refuse to agree to measures that they support, unless the proposal somehow feels like a loss to the other side. Progressives can become so overwhelmed by all the things they want to change about the immigration system that they overlook opportunities for compromises on matters like family separation, almost literally throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Moderate Democrats, who are arguably the biggest roadblocks to immigration reform in a Congress that is only barely under their party’s control, perform outrage when it serves them politically, but bail out of the conversation at the slightest hint of headwinds. (And no one has heard from moderate Republicans in a while.)

Kudos are in order for anyone who has invested enough time learning the intricacies of our immigration system to be able to guide legislators through negotiations. It’s a complicated issue, and few can be bothered to take it on. But asking those experts to try to explain why negotiations have stalled again and again, including on matters that most members of Congress and the public agree on, can be maddening.

For example, Casey Higgins, the Ryan aide, who spent many late nights during the Trump administration on the phone with Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration adviser, told me that when family separation intruded into the larger immigration debate, “it didn’t make things easier to have this thing that everyone in theory agreed on; it actually just made it harder.”

Sorry, what? I asked her to explain.

Higgins said that talking about family separation made Republicans uncomfortable—the administration had gone too far, jeopardizing the party’s credibility with voters. “Obviously,” she said, no one wanted children to be used as “pawns in our political debate.”

This response would have seemed reasonable had she not just finished telling me about what she called the “Chinese-food caucus.” Early in his presidency, Trump had met with Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi over crispy beef and sticky rice in the White House residence. He signaled that he was open to supporting a path to permanent legal status for DACA recipients, or Dreamers. But Republicans in Congress were incensed at the threat of a compromise. Trump had been “ready to give up the sword,” Higgins told me, invoking the long-held Republican position to agree to legislation for Dreamers only if Democrats gave up something significant in return. This strategy, of course, expressly makes children pawns in our political debate, except that Dreamers have been shuffled back and forth across this deranged chess board for so long that they have become adults with children of their own, who are now also caught up in the game.

Higgins told me that for years, she held Immigration 101 sessions with Republican lawmakers ahead of negotiating sessions where she explained basic concepts such as DACA and green cards—something that many Democrats no doubt required as well. But lately, such sessions have become less relevant to her party. Eric Cantor, the former Virginia congressman who was ousted in 2014 by a challenger from his right after negotiating with Democrats on an immigration-reform bill, is far from the only Republican to have learned that good-faith attempts to clean up the system can be career-threatening.

In fact, Higgins said, stagnation on immigration reform has come to be viewed by some in her party as a good thing. “If you go to any Republican on the stump right now, one of the first topics out of their mouth is immigration,” she said. They’re “criticizing the Democrats for wanting to just legalize a bunch of people or free them into the country illegally. It’s a rule-of-law issue, and Republicans can capitalize on that … There’s a perception sometimes that immigrants are getting ahead and being handed something and Americans are struggling to get by.” (Democrats, she said, benefit from the status quo too, because it allows them to malign Republicans as heartless.)

Democrats can and do often appear similarly cynical. In interviews with several Democratic legislators and staffers who have worked on immigration issues, none seemed to have registered the moment in 2018 when the two parties were united against family separation. When I asked about the bills to outlaw the practice that were offered by Republicans at the time, they said they didn’t even remember them. There must, they seemed to assume, have been something wrong with the proposals.

Not even immigration advocacy groups agree about the best way to prevent future family separations. They are focused on a long list of reforms that they consider overdue, a list that seemed to grow exponentially during the Trump era. “Within the advocacy community, family separation was seen as outrageous and extreme but a symptom of a larger problem,” Jennifer Nagda, the policy director at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, told me. The dream of imposing all the changes they would like to see may have been nurtured at the expense of achieving one of them.

Some advocates, such as Conchita Cruz, an executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, think the solution lies not in legislation but in the courts. Dozens of families who were separated during the Trump administration have filed federal lawsuits seeking damages. If successful, their cases could dissuade a future administration from using the tactic again, Cruz said.

But Biden’s Justice Department has been fighting those cases fiercely. It dropped out of settlement negotiations late last year and recently asked a judge to require parents who have sued to undergo psychological examinations. “This is what the Trump administration would be doing,” Cruz said. “I think they’re trying to aggressively discourage families from filing lawsuits.”

Moderate Democrats appear to have given up on the issue altogether. “There was a whole lot of excitement around fixing Trump’s evil policies,” Nagda told me, “and less about fixing some of the bigger problems in the system.” Lately, moderate Democrats have actually been arguing quietly for the Biden administration to keep in place Trump-era restrictions on asylum that are based on the mistaken theory that we can simply enforce our way to a closed border. Staffers for progressive members of Congress who say they have tried agitating with the offices of Democratic leadership on the issue of family separation told me they were getting no response, or hearing back that the party doesn’t have the votes.

“In political speak, that means ‘I don’t want to take this vote, because I think that this issue is unpopular with some of the people that I represent who are going to vote in the next election, and I don’t want to have to deal with that,’” Castro told me. “Some of them feel as though they would support a piece of legislation if they knew that it was actually going to get enacted. They don’t want to spend political capital for a bill if it’s just going to pass the House. Then there’s no benefit to anybody in legislation and there’s a downside in the election.”

Almost all of those who remain committed to the issue are far to the left. In June 2018, Jeff Merkley, a senator from Oregon, traveled to a Texas facility where some separated children were being detained. “One particular cage held a group of young boys, and they were assembled by height from the shortest to the tallest. The shortest was just knee-high to a grasshopper, maybe in the vicinity of 4 years old,” he told me. “I was just kind of stunned, like, My God. America is doing this?” Merkley let out a despairing laugh—one that I have become accustomed to hearing while reporting on this issue.

When I asked him what was holding up congressional action, he pointed to Senate rules that effectively require every single Democrat to be on board for a bill to leave that chamber. He also called out the glut of misinformation about immigration in the news and on social media. But Democrats have not come up with effective messaging to counteract falsehoods that have become mainstream, such as the “Great Replacement” theory and its euphemistic variants. Higgins told me that in town-hall meetings, it would take Ryan, her former boss, eight minutes to explain his platform on immigration, “while someone like Tucker Carlson can go out and say Republicans are trying to replace your jobs with immigrant labor and boom, done.”

Castro said he thought the best hope of movement on immigration—whether it be part of a comprehensive package or a one-off bill on family separation—would be in Congress’s lame-duck session after the midterms. But that doesn’t seem likely. Although that timing might minimize the risks of voting for reform, he acknowledged that it won’t do anything about the lack of enthusiasm in his own party. “I’ll just cut to the chase,” he said, “Republicans are horrible on this issue. I don’t think they care much what happened to these kids or their parents. But there’s also a set of Democrats who are scared of the issue of immigration, including giving legal status to kids that were separated from their parents viciously. They’re scared of other people’s racism and xenophobia at the ballot box.”

The Biden administration recently touted that it had reunited 500 families who were separated under Trump, painstaking work that grows harder with the passage of time. But it acknowledged that about 700 remain separated. And more than four years after American government officials took their children away, more than 130 parents have still not even been located.

Congressional staffers in both parties told me they did not think a future president would be brazen enough to reinstate family separation after the public outcry in 2018. But my reporting suggests that they are being gravely naive. This is not especially hard to prove.

Recently, I phoned in to a conference call with Ken Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia who rose within Trump’s immigration-enforcement ranks to serve as his acting deputy Homeland Security secretary. Cuccinelli held the call to announce, as the invitation put it, his “plan for border states to DECLARE an INVASION” and “propose a formal U.S. declaration of war on Mexican cartels.”

I asked if he expected a future Trump administration to try to prosecute parents traveling with their children across the border, including to seek asylum, which would mean separating families again. “Well, yes,” he replied without hesitation, adding that so would any “other Republican in the future, or any president who was serious about border protection.”

With 2024 groping closer and Republican hopefuls shaping their preliminary campaigns in Trump’s image, the time to try to stop family separation from happening again may soon run out. And that’s to say nothing of the potential return to office of Trump himself. Castro told me that, in his view, Trump stood for white nationalism, QAnon, and family separation. “So if the American people reelected him to become president, he will take that as an affirmation that all of those things were not only okay, but appreciated. And that, to him and to the whole Republican Party, will be a green light to do it again—and do worse.”

I Didn’t Want My Children to Know—And Then I Did

2022-10-26T08:46:48-04:00

For many years, Achut Deng’s survival required her to focus, not on the multiple tragedies and near-death experiences that she had endured before reaching the age of 10, but on the safety and stability that she was precariously striving toward. So when she had children of her own, eventually building a middle-class life in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, she decided to protect their innocence—an innocence she herself was never afforded—and keep her story to herself. Or, at least, she tried.

Mere days after Deng brought her eldest son home from the hospital in 2007, her past began tearing through the facade she had built. Lying in bed with the baby one night, she pulled a blanket over herself and the boy. As if dropped into a slingshot, she flew back to the moment when her grandmother Koko was killed protecting her; Koko had used her own body, wrapped in an embroidered Sudanese sheet called a milaya, to shield Deng from a spray of bullets barraging the hut where they were hiding. Deng told her doctor about the flashback, and he diagnosed her with PTSD and postpartum depression. After that, she stayed silent about the experience, and the flashbacks that followed.

Soon, it was the children themselves—Deng’s family grew to include a second and a third son—who tested the boundaries of what she was willing to share. Until recently, she had only told them that she’d grown up in Sudan and come to the United States as a refugee. One afternoon, after she and her eldest, who was 11 at the time, watched a Minions movie together, he brought up a film he had seen in school that depicted malnourished children in Africa, and asked, “Mom, was that real?”

“I didn’t think they were ready to know,” Deng told me in a recent interview. “I felt like, What good is it going to do to them? I wasn’t thinking of anything positive.”

“The truth is,” she added, “I haven’t seen those videos, but for all I know, I could be one of the children in them. That was literally me.”

Deng is now in the midst of a dramatic about-face in parenting style following yet another near-death experience, this time with the coronavirus—which made her realize she could die before her children knew who she was. She had made sure that their childhoods were comfortable and devoid of hardship. But in concealing her early experiences, she realized, she had been giving her boys the false impression that life—even a stable one—can exist without suffering.

[Read: How parents can help shield kids from a hurricane’s trauma]

Her new memoir for young readers, Don’t Look Back, was written with her boys in mind, but she also wanted to offer other young people the vital lesson that extreme hardship can be the source of great resilience, and something from which it is possible to move on. The book spans her personal history from age 6 to 25, a decade after she arrived in the United States. It begins with Deng’s vivid memories of her youth on a family farm in what is now South Sudan, surrounded by loving, mostly female relatives. Many of the men, including her father, had been required to join the army before she was born and fight in the second Sudanese civil war; most never returned home once they were conscripted.

As Deng grew up and the fighting continued, younger and younger relatives were called to take up arms, including her 7-year-old uncle. Her perspective as a narrator evolves in the book as she ages, but her observations are astute even in her earlier years. In gripping scenes packed with the kind of granular detail to which a child would be especially attuned, she recounts the two largest ethnic groups in South Sudan, Dinka and Nuer—which had previously been allied—turning against each other. Soon, almost everyone Deng knew had left to fight, been killed, or gone missing. “My legs were too small and my strides too short. I tripped over exposed roots and thick clumps of grass,” she recalls of the night when she, her grandmother, and their neighbors first fled their homes following a violent ambush. Racing through a forest full of dangerous predators, she overhears a dog barking to protect its owner from the approaching rebel forces. Deng’s mind wanders to her own dog, Panyliap, who she silently prays is safe at home waiting for her. Then two gunshots ring out, and the stranger’s dog goes silent. Fearing the worst, she pleads to herself, “Please bark … please bark.”

Effectively orphaned at the age of 6, Deng was taken in by Adual, her mother’s best friend, a widow without any children and one of the book’s most memorable characters. Adual often carried Deng during a thousand-mile journey on foot to what was the largest refugee camp in the world, located in the Kenyan town of Kakuma (Swahili for “nowhere”). She made shoes for Deng out of wood and leaves to protect her tiny, blistered feet; she lanced boils on Deng’s body caused by guinea worms, whose larvae she ingested through the puddle water they sometimes had to drink. In Kakuma, where food was scarce, Adual skipped meals so that Deng and other children could have more to eat.

I first heard Deng’s story while reporting on how the coronavirus pandemic was affecting immigrants. When I learned that Smithfield, the South Dakota meat plant where she worked, had the largest single-source outbreak in the country, I asked the head of the union there to connect me with sick workers. He told me about a single mother of three sons who had nearly died from the virus.

True to her mostly private inclinations, during our first interview, Deng walked me through her experience with COVID-19, only occasionally sprinkling in details that piqued my interest in her backstory. She mentioned that her wages at Smithfield helped support nine family members living in three different countries, and that at her sickest point, when she felt like she had a boulder on her chest that allowed in only the shallowest of breaths, she’d planted herself on the living-room couch, refusing to fall asleep because she feared she wouldn’t wake up. She was not going to let her children grow up as orphans the way that she had, she told me. Two engrossing interviews that were each more than three hours long yielded an article and a podcast that combined Deng’s pandemic experience with a truncated version of her immigration story.

During the course of my reporting, Deng confided in me that for some time, she had privately wondered if her story might inspire other people going through difficult times. The answer came when Joy Peskin, the executive editorial editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers, reached out about commissioning a memoir from Deng that would expand on her youth even further. Initially, Deng was torn about the offer. She thought that single parents would benefit most from her story, based on the many who had told her, in response to my coverage, that they considered her a role model. But Peskin sold Deng on the idea of, at least in her first book, speaking directly to readers of the same age she was when her life was first upended.

[Read: Separating kids from their families can permanently damage their brains]

The book was co-written by Keely Hutton, the author of Soldier Boy and Secret Soldiers, two books about children and conflict set amid the Ugandan Civil War and in Europe during World War I. When the collaboration began, Deng was working overnight shifts at the meat plant, so she and Hutton mapped out a strict schedule, aiming to draft one chapter a week. Deng would get off work at around three in the morning; go home to nap for a couple of hours; take her youngest son, Mayom, to school (the others were old enough to take themselves); and then sleep a bit more. Then she and Hutton would work on the book until it was time for Deng to return to Smithfield. On Mondays and Tuesdays, Deng would write down what she remembered for that particular chapter—“stream of consciousness, no punctuation,” she told me. On Tuesdays, Deng and Hutton would speak on the phone for hours, filling in missing details and establishing a structure. On Wednesdays, Hutton would write and then send Deng a draft, which she would read to her sons, now 15, 14, and 8, at the dinner table on Sundays. “I knew I had very strong boys on my hands” based on their early reactions, Deng recalled. The boys were shocked, occasionally to the point of tears—but they weren’t shaken in the way she had expected, or to a degree that concerned her.

On a video call during a rare night off from basketball practice, the boys told me that hearing their mother’s story made them admire her more. It also helped them understand some of Deng’s tics, such as her obsessive stocking of the refrigerator, to the point that food was often spoiling. They assured her that they had never gone to bed hungry, as Deng had during childhood, and that she could cut back a bit.

Though Deng’s story sometimes feels impossibly painful to take in, she also recounts how, as a child, she conjured the strength to persevere through malaria, a near-fatal snake bite, and exhaustion that made her want to stop walking even if it meant she would die. The story is also flecked with Deng’s sense of humor—there is her first ride down an escalator, straddling three steps and begging for God’s mercy, and an early trip to an American grocery store, where she and a friend discover, to their bewilderment, a special section for food prepared just for dogs.

The book may also offer young readers an introduction to the mass migrations under way now: the millions of Ukrainians who have fled invading Russian forces this year, the exodus of Venezuelans escaping political turmoil and a severe financial crisis. These incidents will affect the displaced for the rest of their life—even those who, like Deng, hope to build anew. In a scene reminiscent of reunifications between children and parents separated at the southern border during the Trump administration, Deng watches, confused, as a young friend’s body goes rigid and her face remains expressionless when she finds her mother again after years of forced separation. Only later does Deng come to understand that her friend was so traumatized by the separation from her mother that she went into shock and was initially unable to process her emotions when they were finally reunited.

At a time when many parents are debating whether and how to share the seemingly ceaseless and overwhelming bad news of the day with their children, Don’t Look Back reminds us why stories about confronting extreme human challenges can have a profoundly positive and even lifesaving impact. This was true even for Deng herself during her hardest moments. “It is my hope that just as I drew strength and faith from Koko, Adual, and every person who helped carry me, my story will help carry you,” Deng writes in the acknowledgments. “I pray it provides you some light when the nights are too long, and the darkness is too heavy. You are strong. Don’t let go. Never forget who you are.”

An American Catastrophe

2022-08-07T08:00:00-04:00

Photo-Illustrations by Oliver Munday

Editor’s Note: This story earned the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.

As a therapist for children who are being processed through the American immigration system, Cynthia Quintana has a routine that she repeats each time she meets a new patient in her office in Grand Rapids, Michigan: She calls the parents or closest relatives to let them know the child is safe and well cared for, and provides 24-hour contact information.

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This process usually plays out within hours of when the children arrive. Most are teens who have memorized or written down their relatives’ phone numbers in notebooks they carried with them across the border. By the time of that initial call, their families are typically worried, waiting anxiously for news after having—in an act of desperation—sent their children into another country alone in pursuit of safety and the hope of a future.

But in the summer of 2017, Quintana encountered a curious case. A 3-year-old Guatemalan boy with a toothy smile and bowl-cut black hair sat down at her desk. He was far too little to have made the journey on his own. He had no phone numbers with him, and when she asked where he was headed or whom he’d been with, the boy stared back blankly. Quintana scoured his file for more information but found nothing. She asked for help from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, who came back several days later with something unusual: information indicating that the boy’s father was in federal custody.

At their next session, the boy squirmed in his chair as Quintana dialed the detention center, getting his father on the line. At first the dad was quiet, she told me. “Finally we said, ‘Your child is here. He can hear you. You can speak now.’ And you could just tell that his voice was breaking—he couldn’t.”

The boy cried out for his father. Suddenly, both of them were screaming and sobbing so loudly that several of Quintana’s colleagues ran to her office.

Eventually, the man calmed down enough to address Quintana directly. “I’m so sorry, who are you? Where is my child? They came in the middle of the night and took him,” he said. “What do I tell his mother?”

That same summer, Quintana was also assigned to work with a 3-year-old Honduran girl who gave no indication of how she’d gotten to the United States or where she was supposed to be going. During their first several sessions, the girl refused to speak at all. The muscles on her face were slack and expressionless. Quintana surmised that the girl had severe detachment disorder, often the result of a sudden and recent trauma.

Across her organization—Bethany Christian Services, one of several companies contracted by the American government to care for newly arrived immigrant children—Quintana’s colleagues were having similar experiences. Jennifer Leon, a teacher at Bethany, was at the office one day when the private company that transports children from the border delivered a baby girl “like an Amazon package.” The baby was wearing a dirty diaper; her face was crusted with mucus. “They gave the baby to the case manager with a diaper bag, we signed, that was it,” Leon recalled. (Leon rushed the baby to the hospital for an evaluation.)

Mateo Salazar, a Bethany therapist, went to his office in the middle of the night to meet a newly arrived 5-year-old Honduran girl. At first, the girl was stoic, but when the transportation-company employees started to leave, the girl ran after them, banging on the glass doors and crying as she fell to the ground. Salazar sat with her for two hours until she was calm enough to explain that her mother had made her promise—as Border Patrol agents were pulling them apart—to stay with the adults who took her no matter what, because they would keep her safe.

For more than a year, Quintana and her colleagues encountered cases like this repeatedly. To track down the parents of children in their care, they would scour American prisons and immigration detention centers, using clues from social media or tips from friends inside the government. They would struggle to explain to parents why their kids had been taken away or how to get them back. The therapists, teachers, and caseworkers would try to maintain their composure at work, but they would later break down in their cars and in front of their families. Many debated quitting their job. Though they were experts in caring for severely traumatized children, this was a challenge to which they did not know how to respond.

“I started questioning myself,” Quintana said. “Am I doing the correct thing by serving these kids, or am I contributing to the harm that’s being done?”

“It just seemed unreal to me,” she said of the moment she understood that these were not one-off cases. “Something that was not humane.”

During the year and a half in which the U.S. government separated thousands of children from their parents, the Trump administration’s explanations for what was happening were deeply confusing, and on many occasions—it was clear even then—patently untrue. I’m one of the many reporters who covered this story in real time. Despite the flurry of work that we produced to fill the void of information, we knew that the full truth about how our government had reached this point still eluded us.

Trump-administration officials insisted for a whole year that family separations weren’t happening. Finally, in the spring of 2018, they announced the implementation of a separation policy with great fanfare—as if one had not already been under way for months. Then they declared that separating families was not the goal of the policy, but an unfortunate result of prosecuting parents who crossed the border illegally with their children. Yet a mountain of evidence shows that this is explicitly false: Separating children was not just a side effect, but the intent. Instead of working to reunify families after parents were prosecuted, officials worked to keep them apart for longer.

Over the past year and a half, I have conducted more than 150 interviews and reviewed thousands of pages of internal government documents, some of which were turned over to me only after a multiyear lawsuit. These records show that as officials were developing the policy that would ultimately tear thousands of families apart, they minimized its implications so as to obscure what they were doing. Many of these officials now insist that there had been no way to foresee all that would go wrong. But this is not true. The policy’s worst outcomes were all anticipated, and repeated internal and external warnings were ignored. Indeed, the records show that almost no logistical planning took place before the policy was initiated.

It’s been said of other Trump-era projects that the administration’s incompetence mitigated its malevolence; here, the opposite happened. A flagrant failure to prepare meant that courts, detention centers, and children’s shelters became dangerously overwhelmed; that parents and children were lost to each other, sometimes many states apart; that four years later, some families are still separated—and that even many of those who have been reunited have suffered irreparable harm.

A migrant child looks out the window of a bus leaving a U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention center in McAllen, Texas, in June 2018. (Spencer Platt / Getty)

It is easy to pin culpability for family separations on the anti-immigration officials for which the Trump administration is known. But these separations were also endorsed and enabled by dozens of members of the government’s middle and upper management: Cabinet secretaries, commissioners, chiefs, and deputies who, for various reasons, didn’t voice concern even when they should have seen catastrophe looming; who trusted “the system” to stop the worst from happening; who reasoned that it would not be strategic to speak up in an administration where being labeled a RINO or a “squish”—nicknames for those deemed insufficiently conservative—could end their career; who assumed that someone else, in some other department, must be on top of the problem; who were so many layers of abstraction away from the reality of screaming children being pulled out of their parent’s arms that they could hide from the human consequences of what they were doing.

Congress, too, deserves blame, because it failed for decades to fill a legislative vacuum that anti-immigration officials moved to exploit. For too long, an overworked and underequipped border-police force has been left to determine crucial social, economic, and humanitarian policy. It should be no surprise that this police force reached for the most ready tool at its disposal: harsher punishments.

What happened in the months that led up to the implementation of Zero Tolerance—the Trump administration’s initiative that separated thousands of families—should be studied by future generations of organizational psychologists and moral philosophers. It raises questions that have resonance far beyond this one policy: What happens when personal ambition and moral qualm clash in the gray anonymity of a bureaucracy? When rationalizations become denial or outright delusion? When one’s understanding of the line between right and wrong gets overridden by a boss’s screaming insistence?

[From the May 2021 issue: Caitlin Dickerson on how America never wanted the tired, poor, huddled masses]

In reporting this story, I talked with scores of Trump-administration officials whose work was in some way connected to the policy. Very few were willing to speak on the record, for fear that it would affect their employment prospects. A number of them told me they were particularly nervous because they had children to think about and college tuitions to pay. During interviews, they asked to call me back so that they could run and pick their children up from school; they sat their children down in front of homework or toys so that we could speak privately in their homes. “Can you hold on? My daughter is about to get in her car to leave and I need to kiss her goodbye,” one government official said as she was in the middle of describing a spreadsheet of hundreds of complaints from parents searching for their children. I listened as the mother and daughter said “I love you” back and forth to each other at least five times before the official returned and our conversation continued.

Recently, I called Nazario Jacinto-Carrillo, a 36-year-old farmer from the western highlands of Guatemala whom I first wrote about in 2018. Back then, with his field barren and the price of crops stagnant, his family had been straining to survive on the $4 a week he brought home during harvest season. Most days, he and his wife went hungry; some days, his two young children did too. They were destitute and felt unsafe in their community. So that spring, he and his 5-year-old daughter, Filomena, set off for the United States. A “coyote” guided them to the American border near San Diego. All they had to do was walk across.

Things didn’t go as planned. As six Border Patrol agents surrounded them, Filomena grabbed onto one of Nazario’s legs, as did another girl her age with whom they were traveling. The girls screamed as the agents pulled the three apart, one of them holding Nazario by the neck. Nazario eventually agreed to be deported back to Guatemala because, he said, a federal agent told him that if he did so, Filomena would be returned to him within two weeks. This false promise was made to many separated parents, who were later portrayed by the administration as having heartlessly chosen to leave their children alone in the United States. “I would never abandon my daughter,” Nazario told me when we first spoke. More than a month had passed since Nazario’s deportation, and Filomena still wasn’t home.

Nazario’s voice cracked as he interrupted my questions with his own. When will Filomena be returned to Guatemala? How many weeks? What number of days? When is the United States government going to give back the children it kidnapped? What does it want with them? They’re children.

These illustrations were created by The Atlantic using direct quotes from parents who were separated from their children. Interviews were conducted by the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, a legal-advocacy organization that has helped separated families build and file lawsuits against the U.S. government. In a statement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection told The Atlantic, “We take all allegations seriously, provide multiple avenues to report allegations of misconduct, and investigate all formal complaints.” (Photo-illustrations by Oliver Munday)

It would take nearly three months, a team of lawyers, the sustained attention of journalists, and a federal court order for Filomena to be reunited with her family. By then she was 6; she’d celebrated a birthday in U.S. government custody.

[Read: How the Trump family-separation policy traumatizes children]

When I called Nazario again recently, his children were still hungry and his family still felt unsafe. I told him that four years later, some parents still don’t have their children back. “I honestly don’t know what to say,” he said. When I asked him if Filomena, now 9 years old, thinks back on what she experienced in the U.S., he handed her the phone so she could answer herself. She eked out a few words that I couldn’t understand and then went silent and handed the phone back to her father.

“Sorry,” he told me. “She’s crying.”

The Dawn of Zero Tolerance

To understand how the American government took children away from their parents with no plan to return them, you have to go back to 9/11. Following the deadliest attack in U.S. history, the Bush administration created a new federal department. Comprising 22 offices and agencies, the Department of Homeland Security became the largest federal law-enforcement agency in the country. Its hundreds of thousands of employees were charged with vetting foreigners as they entered the U.S., any of whom could be carrying out the next plot to take American lives.

Among the agencies folded into DHS was the Border Patrol. A federal police force established in 1924, the Border Patrol resembled something out of an old Western. The agency drew thousands of young men and women who wanted to fight crime and carry weapons—and because for decades it did not require a high-school degree, it attracted many who might not have qualified to work for their local police department. For every one person the Border Patrol caught, chasing after them on foot, horseback, or ATV, 100 others seemed to slip through. Even the agents themselves knew that their work was mostly ineffectual.

But after 9/11, the agency took on a national-security mission, and the way that it viewed border crossers evolved. Though a denigrating posture toward migrants was nothing new—agents referred to people they apprehended as “bodies,” and categorized them with terms like guats and hondus—suddenly the agency’s leadership began describing these day laborers as hardened criminals and grave threats to the homeland. The Border Patrol Academy transformed from a classroom-like setting, with courses on immigration law and Spanish, into a paramilitary-style boot camp.

No longer content to police the national boundary by focusing on the highest-priority offenses, the Border Patrol now sought to secure it completely. A single illegal border crossing was one too many. The new goal was zero tolerance.

In 2005, during George W. Bush’s second term, an enterprising Border Patrol chief in Del Rio, Texas, named Randy Hill came up with an idea for how to eliminate unauthorized border crossings for good: He would make the process so unpleasant that no one would want to do it. He looked to a legal provision added into federal immigration law in the 1950s that had only rarely been enforced; it made any unauthorized border crossing a misdemeanor crime, and any repeat offense a felony. Before 2005, federal judges and prosecutors had tacitly agreed to leave migrants alone, except in high-profile cases. People picking crops for under-the-table wages were not a principal concern for most Americans; overworked U.S. attorneys preoccupied with major drug- and weapons-smuggling cases viewed border crossing as a minor infraction not worth their time. (Hill could not be reached for comment.)

But the Del Rio chief persuaded his counterparts in local law enforcement to participate in an experiment in which every adult who was caught crossing the border illegally, no matter the reason, would be prosecuted. This would subject the migrants to formal deportation proceedings, and trigger even harsher penalties if they were caught trying to cross again in the future, all but cutting off their route to citizenship.

This initiative, named Operation Streamline, would form the basis of a school of thought that has made “prevention by deterrence” a centerpiece of the United States’ immigration enforcement today. Parents traveling with children were generally exempt from prosecution under Operation Streamline, but this approach to securing the border would eventually culminate in family separation.

The experiment started out promisingly enough. Within four years, apprehensions at the border in Del Rio dropped by 75 percent, and in Yuma, Arizona, by 95 percent. Border Patrol headquarters was so impressed that it moved to implement the plan nationwide. But the effort may have been less successful than those numbers suggested.

In regions that didn’t adopt Streamline, border crossings increased, indicating that the program was pushing people to cross in different areas. “I call it ‘squeezing the balloon,’ ” Anthony Porvaznik, who served as the Border Patrol chief in Yuma during the Obama and Trump administrations, told me. While the first half decade of Streamline coincided with an overall decline in nationwide crossings, academic research indicates that this was largely attributable to economics. (Declining births in Mexico had resulted in far fewer adults who needed work, while demand for labor in the United States plummeted in 2008, during the recession.) Those who did appear to be deterred by Streamline were migrant workers who had never been to jail before, Porvaznik said. People carrying drugs or weapons across the border didn’t seem to care.

In many ways, the implementation of Streamline was a mess. Courthouses along the border became so overwhelmed that they had to close to the public. Judges began holding mass hearings, with groups of up to 100 shackled defendants being tried at the same time. Arizona declared a judicial emergency in early 2011, temporarily suspending the right to a speedy trial for all federal defendants, including American citizens. Law-enforcement officers argued that the onslaught of misdemeanor prosecutions required by Streamline took resources away from serious felony cases.

Yet criminal prosecutions against border crossers became more and more politically popular. Under the Bush and Obama administrations, DHS officials who were eager to show that they were keeping the nation safe testified before Congress that Operation Streamline was an industry “best practice.” Border Patrol agents embraced the model too, finally feeling empowered after decades of impotence.

[Caitlin Dickerson: America’s immigration amnesia]

By the mid-2010s, deepening poverty and an explosion of gang and domestic violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador were driving children and families to the border in larger numbers. (Today, the State Department discourages Americans from traveling to those countries, because of rampant kidnapping and murder.) Jonathan White, a longtime Health and Human Services social worker, was sent to assess the situation. He saw children crammed into tiny, concrete Border Patrol holding cells or sleeping under bridges while they waited to be processed into the United States. In one facility, “the fire-marshal sign over the door said max occupancy 35 people,” White told me. More than 80 teenage boys were passing around water in paper cups and climbing over one another to access a single toilet. He saw a baby lying alone on a flattened cardboard box. “We were horrified from a public-health, child-health perspective.”

In 2014, Jeh Johnson, President Barack Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security, called John Kelly, a Marine Corps general who was serving as the highest-ranking U.S.-military official in Central and South America, for advice. “I said, ‘Come down here,’ ” Kelly recalled telling Johnson at the time. “ ‘You have to come down here and look north and see what the other side of the problem is all about.’ ”

During Johnson’s July 2014 visit to Guatemala City, Kelly explained that the mass migration of children and families seeking asylum in the U.S. was not a threat to national security, but said that the crush at the border would continue to build unless jobs became more plentiful, and violence less rife, across Central America. No amount of “deterrence,” Kelly told Johnson, would outweigh all of the factors driving Central Americans to the United States. Johnson left Guatemala City with a better understanding of the dynamics he faced but no solution for his overwhelmed agents or his boss, President Obama.

So Johnson convened a meeting in Washington with his top border-enforcement officials to discuss ideas. Among those present were Kevin McAleenan, who was then the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection; Ron Vitiello, the deputy chief of the Border Patrol; and Tom Homan, the executive associate director of enforcement and removal for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. All three would subsequently be promoted, and become integral to implementing family separations four years later.

Of those in the room, Homan was the most strident. He had spent decades in immigration enforcement, beginning in his early 20s as a Border Patrol agent. Homan said he wanted to apply the perceived lessons of Operation Streamline to migrant families, by prosecuting parents who crossed the border illegally with their children. Though many of these families came to the U.S. seeking asylum, under this new model they would be treated as criminals. Homan explained that the parents would be taken into federal criminal custody, just like with Operation Streamline—only this time the process would trigger an automatic family separation.

This is the earliest instance I’ve discovered of family separation being proposed as a way to deter migration to the United States. This makes Tom Homan the father of what might be the Trump administration’s most controversial policy. “Most parents don’t want to be separated,” Homan told me recently. “I’d be lying to you if I didn’t think that would have an effect.”

Homan acknowledged that many people would think him evil for proposing the idea, but he said it was intended to help families, not hurt them. He explained himself by way of an experience that, he said, still troubles him today. One day in the spring of 2003, he said, he got a call from ICE headquarters asking him to rush to a crime scene near Victoria, a city in Southeast Texas. He flew to the border, where more than 70 migrants had been discovered packed into the back of an overheated semitruck. When the authorities found them, 17 of the passengers were already dead; two more died soon after. Lifeless bodies spilled out of the truck. Most of the passengers had stripped down to their underwear for relief from the heat.

As Homan surveyed the trailer, he noticed a boy who turned out to be 5 years old—the same age as Homan’s youngest son—lying in his father’s lap, both of them dead. “I got down on my knees, put my hand on the child’s head, and said a prayer, because I could only imagine what his last hour of life must have been like, how scared he must have been. Couldn’t breathe, pitch black, begging his father to help him. His father couldn’t help. What was his father thinking? He’d put him in that position, right? His father was probably saying, ‘I can’t believe I did this.’ ” He said the experience had driven him to therapy. “That one instance made me who I am today, because it’s preventable. We could stop this.”

Homan said he had families like this in mind when he pitched Secretary Johnson on the idea of prosecuting parents and taking their children away. Yes, the separated families would suffer, he acknowledged, but at least “they’re not dead.”

“The goal wasn’t to traumatize,” he added. “The goal was to stop the madness, stop the death, stop the rape, stop the children dying, stop the cartels doing what they’re doing.”

When the official Zero Tolerance policy went into effect, in the spring of 2018, the Trump administration made frequent use of this defense. I heard it again and again while I was conducting interviews for this story: Families were separated not to harm them but to keep others like them safe. What I never heard anyone acknowledge was that “deterrence” methods such as family separation have been shown to increase the likelihood of these terrible outcomes—because harsher enforcement induces children and families to try to sneak across the border using more dangerous methods, such as hiding in the back of a tractor trailer.

Johnson eventually rejected Homan’s proposal. Though he professed belief in the value of deterrence, he said that, as a father, he couldn’t stomach separating children from their parents.

“Family separation was raised and rejected for two reasons,” Johnson told me recently. First, “I already had in my mind the vivid visual image of a mother clinging to a child in a Border Patrol holding station—and I was not going to ask somebody from the Border Patrol or ICE to take that child away.” Second, “it would have overrun” government shelters for children. “So it was heartless and impractical.”

The C-Team Assembles

(November 2016–January 2017)

In the executive branch of the American government, policy ideas are traditionally vetted first by subject-matter experts—lower-level staffers whose knowledge is specific and deep. The ideas that pass muster are elevated to managers who are familiar with multiple areas of study and, therefore, a potential policy’s broader implications. Finally, proposals are handed to political appointees who ensure that they meet the objectives of the administration. Only those policies that survive these layers of vetting are presented to principals—the Cabinet secretaries or agency heads who decide, based on exhaustive briefings, whether or not to authorize them.

The system serves multiple purposes: It protects those at the top from getting so entangled in the specifics of one part of their portfolio that they neglect another. And given the little firsthand knowledge they have, it’s supposed to prevent those in authority from making uninformed decisions. “It’s a very poorly kept secret in Washington that principals never have any idea what they are talking about,” one Trump White House official told me. Keep that in mind as we move forward in this timeline.

As Donald Trump prepared to fill the political positions that sit atop the bureaucracy in January 2017, he had a thin bench from which to draw. During Trump’s campaign, many prominent Republicans had sworn publicly never to support him. The list shrank further when Chris Christie, Trump’s transition head, was fired. When Christie left, so did many establishment Republicans he’d lined up. It was time to bring in the C-team.

The political appointees who came to work on immigration issues in the new administration can be sorted into two groups.

In the first group were establishment Republicans—I’ll refer to them as the Careerists—who were compelled not by the president but by the call to serve their country, as well as by personal ambition: With so few qualified candidates eager to work for Trump, those willing to do so got installed a few rungs higher in the bureaucracy than they likely would have in a traditional administration. Like other moderate Republicans, they still hoped that Trump would be less erratic and extreme as president than he had been as a candidate. And if not, they told themselves, the bureaucracy would save them: Trump’s most outlandish ideas would never survive the layers of expert review.

Some members of this group came from a tight-knit community of national-security wonks who had occupied the lower rungs of leadership in the Department of Homeland Security when it was first established. Now mid-career and entering middle age, they had stayed in close touch; at Bush-alumni events, they could usually be found huddling about cybersecurity or anti-terrorism issues. They were not particularly hawkish on immigration by the standards of Trump’s GOP. Among this group was Kirstjen Nielsen, a senior policy director at the Transportation Security Administration upon its founding, who was selected to “sherpa” John Kelly, the president’s nominee for DHS secretary, through his confirmation process. She would later become the face of family separations.

For the second group—I’ll refer to them as the Hawks—Trump was a vehicle for the implementation of ideas they had been honing for years. He doubled down on their plans to slash immigration after seeing how popular they were at campaign rallies. Credit for that success went to Stephen Miller, the Hawks’ leader, who had already achieved minor infamy while working as the communications director for Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. He signed on as chief speechwriter and senior adviser to the president. Sessions, who had previously been ostracized by his own party for his almost fundamentalist stance on immigration, became Trump’s first attorney general.

Lesser known than Miller was Gene Hamilton, a lawyer who had worked for ICE in Atlanta before going to Capitol Hill as then-Senator Sessions’s general counsel. He became senior counselor to Secretary Kelly. Hamilton’s reputation is complex; he stood out to colleagues as exceptionally kind and, indeed, family oriented, and frequently asked colleagues about their children and personal lives. But he believed that immigration laws should be applied with draconian rigor. Though Atlanta had the country’s harshest immigration courts, where more than 90 percent of immigrant defendants lost their cases, he had left that job angry, according to a longtime colleague, because he felt that too many undocumented immigrants were given a “free pass.” (Miller declined to comment for this story. Hamilton did not respond to requests for comment.)

To staff his team in the White House, Stephen Miller hired a variety of people from the anti-immigrant fringes of official Washington. Many had personally helped thwart bipartisan reform efforts in the past. Now they planned to bypass Congress altogether, using every possible presidential authority to shape the nation’s immigration policies without any input from legislators.

The Hawks knew that their plans were going to be controversial, but they didn’t care. New colleagues were viewed as closeted liberals until proved otherwise. “There’s this worship of process,” John Zadrozny, who joined Miller’s team as a member of the White House Domestic Policy Council, told me. “Process, process, process. Process is code for ‘We can slow down the quick impulses of a fiery political administration with no experts.’ Well, that’s not what was voted for.”

“Our posture was ‘If you don’t want to make these tough decisions, go,’ ” Zadrozny said. “ ‘There are plenty of us here who will do these things and sleep at night … We know we’ll take a few arrows. That’s okay. That’s why we’re here.’ ”

Prone to paranoia and insularity, the Hawks signed nondisclosure agreements and met during the transition in secret war-room sessions, unencumbered by general-counsel staff who might say their ideas were illegal, or by bureaucrats who might call them unrealistic. They composed a raft of executive orders, many of which read more like press releases, though Miller would later use them to strong-arm Cabinet secretaries into fulfilling his wishes.

In any other presidential administration, Miller’s disregard for the chain of command would have been grounds for his dismissal. But he possessed a kind of mystique that insulated him from consequences. Almost no one, including Cabinet secretaries, dared challenge him, even as he drove them to distraction. (At least one Cabinet secretary negotiated an effective ban on ever having to deal directly with Miller, and another demanded that Miller never speak to his subordinates without permission—an order that Miller did not heed.)

Miller was better than other advisers at managing his relationship with the president. He avoided the limelight and never pushed back, as others did, against the president’s more ill-considered ideas. But when I asked his colleagues why he was afforded such protection, they reminded me that this was an administration plagued by insecurity and imposter syndrome: The president and his family had not expected to win the 2016 election. When they did, a narrative formed that gave Miller, and his immigration speeches, the credit. Miller’s messaging came to be seen as crucial to securing a second term.

At meetings about immigration policy during the transition, Miller and Gene Hamilton displayed how little they understood about border enforcement. According to people who attended the meetings, they proposed ideas that were outlandishly impractical—such as sending National Guard troops to the border to block migrants from setting foot on American soil, or building barriers across private land, including through waterways where such structures would not be able to withstand seasonal weather patterns. “They were talking like people who’d never been down on the border,” one official said.

But instead of pushing back against bad ideas in those early meetings, the Careerists just rolled their eyes and commiserated afterward. I asked a number of them why they hadn’t explained the obvious reasons such policies should not be pursued. These were “speak when spoken to” environments, they told me. And precisely because the proposals being batted around were so terrifically bad, they felt confident that the bureaucracy would neutralize them. In the end, these officials assumed—incorrectly—that the only harm done by those meetings would be the time they wasted.

One idea that surfaced multiple times in early 2017 was Tom Homan’s Obama-era proposal to prosecute parents coming across the border with their children and separate them. John Kelly, who did not hide his distaste for the Hawks, told me that Stephen Miller pitched the idea to him directly, with support from Hamilton. Kelly came into his position at a disadvantage, as did Kirstjen Nielsen, whom he’d appointed as his chief of staff. Though they understood, at a high level, the push-and-pull factors influencing immigration trends, they had little knowledge of the actual federal immigration code or the mechanisms through which it was enforced. This made Kelly reliant on Hamilton’s knowledge of the system, despite his disdain for Hamilton’s politics. “There would be this unusual dynamic where Kelly would kind of rib Gene,” a senior DHS official told me about the daily morning staff meetings. “He would say, ‘Oh, Gene-O, has your buddy Stephen been calling you up lately?’ That was Kelly’s way of saying, ‘I know that you’ve got friends in all these places and there’s this right-wingy immigration network here, but I’m the boss, so make sure everything comes through me.’ ”

Kelly told me he immediately opposed separating families, not just on moral grounds but also for pragmatic reasons: Based on his own experiences in Central America, he didn’t think it would work. Kelly knew the moral argument wouldn’t sway Trump, so he focused on the logistical challenges. He asked for a cursory review of the policy, after which he came to the same conclusion as Jeh Johnson: Though the idea was likely legal, it was wildly impractical—executing it successfully would require hundreds of millions of dollars to build new detention facilities and months to train staff within both Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, the latter of which would be charged with caring for the separated children. (In March 2017, Kelly told CNN that the idea was under consideration, fueling rumors and confusion that would linger for the next year.)

Based on this review, Kelly told me, he decided definitively not to authorize a separation program. He shared his decision publicly, first in a meeting with Senate Democrats on March 29, 2017, and subsequently with the press.

After that, Kelly told me, every time the idea was proposed in a Cabinet or other meeting, he would refer back to the results of the review, as if reading from a script: Separating families was simply impossible. He told Trump that the president would have to ask Congress for the funds for it, knowing that he would never agree to do that, “because that then links him to the policy, and he loses deniability,” Kelly said.

But the idea to separate families was proceeding anyway, on numerous tracks at once, including some that were out of Kelly’s sight. On Valentine’s Day 2017, Kevin McAleenan, now the acting head of Customs and Border Protection, hosted a large meeting with representatives of CBP, ICE, HHS, and a smattering of White House Hawks.

On the other side of the table from the Hawks, both literally and figuratively, was Jonathan White, the social worker. A former academic, White had become a commander in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and risen quickly within HHS: Weeks before Trump was elected president, White had been tapped to head the program that houses immigrant children in U.S.-government custody, a division of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Along with most of that office’s employees, he is an expert in childhood trauma. He views the children in the office’s care as the most vulnerable in the Western Hemisphere, not merely because they are alone in a foreign country but because they are “off the charts when it comes to ACEs,” or adverse childhood experiences, such as exposure to violence, food insecurity, and the feeling that their life is at risk. Even before Trump took office, ORR had often been left out of meetings because it was viewed as an impediment to border enforcement.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Kirstjen Nielsen, then Kelly’s chief of staff, meet with Tom Homan, Gene Hamilton, Matt Albence, and other senior DHS leaders in March 2017. (U.S. Department of Homeland Security)

White says the environment was like a pep rally, with two deputies of Tom Homan’s—Matt Albence and Tim Robbins—announcing their plans for securing the border, which included separating migrant families. (Robbins did not respond to requests for comment.) As the initiative was described, White says, he turned pale and began strategizing about how to stop it. He requested a white paper articulating the idea, knowing that having such documentation would allow him to lobby against family separation directly to the Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, and to share it with other parts of the HHS bureaucracy that could begin to outline its many ethical and logistical flaws. (Documents show that White would continue to request the white paper from CBP and ICE officials, who promised it was coming, though it never materialized.)

Meanwhile, Kelly learned that Miller was contacting various DHS officials to push forward the idea of separating families, and he was furious. Kelly stormed into one of his daily morning staff meetings and declared that anyone contacted by Miller needed to refer him directly to Kelly—and that, in any case, DHS would not be moving forward with the idea, no matter how many times it was raised. He told Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, to keep Miller away from his subordinates at DHS.

By the time Kelly replaced Priebus as Trump’s chief of staff, he thought he had shut down the discussion of separating families for good. But a local initiative was already under way that would soon be used to justify separations on a nationwide scale.

The Pilot

(March–November 2017)

In the spring of 2017, as illegal border crossings were undergoing their typical seasonal spike, Jeff Self, the Border Patrol chief in El Paso, Texas, acted on a general message that he and other sector chiefs had received after Trump’s election—to work with their local counterparts at the Department of Justice to crack down on border crossings in service of the new president’s agenda. Self decided that the best way to do that would be for his agents to start referring parents traveling with children for prosecution. Though he likely didn’t realize it at the time, Self was laying the groundwork for a national policy that called for separating families. Federal officials would later call his local initiative a “pilot” and use it as a model for expanding the practice nationwide. (Self declined to comment for this story.)

A Border Patrol agent working under Self emailed an assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas about the departure from prior practice. Though phrased in such a way as to suggest an insignificant administrative change, the email was in fact describing a revival of the idea Tom Homan had proposed to Jeh Johnson in 2014—using prosecution and family separations as a means of deterring would-be migrants.

At the time, the Western District of Texas was being run by Richard Durbin, who was keeping the U.S. attorney’s seat warm until a Trump appointee could be nominated and confirmed. Durbin, who had been with the office for decades, responded to the policy change with skepticism. “History would not judge that kindly,” he wrote to his colleagues. Though Durbin agreed that exempting all parents from prosecution seemed unwise, he said he had “no confidence” in the Border Patrol’s ability to determine which ones deserved to face prosecution. “We don’t want small children separated from parents and placed into some bureaucratic child services or foster agency in limbo.”

Durbin eventually consented to prosecuting some parents, but he wanted to focus on those who were also being accused of much more serious crimes. “If culpability is very low and they have their own children we don’t need to prosecute,” he wrote in an email. “If they are a sicario [cartel hit man] we should prosecute and figure out how to deal humanely with children.”

But the instructions sent to Border Patrol agents, which I obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, contain none of the limitations Durbin requested, instead emphasizing that “the US Attorney’s office will be contacted to seek prosecution for the adults of every family unit arrested.” The document is dedicated mostly to warning agents against contacting assistant U.S. attorneys about the cases late at night or on weekends. It does not contain any guidance on how to separate parents and children or what each should be told about what was happening.

A person familiar with Durbin’s thinking told me he was incensed when he discovered that the Border Patrol’s change in policy was not intended to punish hard-core criminals who might have been using children to gain entry to the United States, but was instead a strategy to deter families seeking asylum. “I was bamboozled,” Durbin reportedly said. “They didn’t care about our prosecutions. They wanted a reason for separating children from parents.”

Wesley Farris, a Border Patrol agent in El Paso, was asked to handle some of the separation cases. In one instance, a boy who was about 2 years old grabbed onto him in confusion, refusing to let go. “The world was upside down to that kid,” Farris told PBS’s Frontline. “That one got me.” Farris told his supervisor afterward not to assign him to separation cases anymore. “That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever done,” he recalled. “You can’t help but see your own kids.”

Meanwhile, the El Paso Border Patrol immediately started looking to expand Jeff Self’s initiative to New Mexico. “Although it is always a difficult decision to separate these families,” an agent wrote to the acting U.S. attorney there, “it is the hope that this separation will act as a deterrent to parents bringing their children into the harsh circumstances that are present when trying to enter the United States illegally.” Some separations also occurred in Yuma, Arizona, under a separate initiative.

The instructions sent to Border Patrol agents that launched the family-separation pilot in El Paso, Texas, did not contain any guidance on how to separate parents and children or what each should be told about what was happening.

In the spring of 2017, Nora Núñez, a public defender in Yuma, noticed that the cellblocks at the federal courthouse were overflowing with detainees, many of them hysterical parents. The system was already under strain from other prosecutions, so Núñez had to move briskly to keep it from breaking down. “Having to get really firm with someone who was crying and upset because they didn’t know where their kid was was heartbreaking,” she told me.

Though Núñez had never seen misdemeanor charges filed against parents migrating with their children, she assumed that the families would be reunited as soon as their cases were completed, so she rushed them through the process even quicker than usual. Núñez only realized months later that by the time her clients were returned to immigration custody, many of their children had been sent to shelters in different states.

Alma Acevedo, who was then working at Bethany Christian Services in Michigan, said the organization was inundated with children so inconsolable that teaching them was impossible. “It wasn’t just tears,” Acevedo told me, as I reported at the time. “It was screams.”

When Acevedo managed to reach separated parents by phone, they asked for her advice about whether they should sign paperwork that immigration officers had given them. Acevedo feared that the parents were being asked to consent to their own deportations. “Parents are saying, ‘The immigration officer told me if I signed this document, they would give me my child back,’” she said. “The parents would sign in desperation and then, the next thing you know, they would call me from their home country and say, ‘I’m here, where’s my child? Give me my child back.’ It was really sad and really depressing hearing the parents cry all the time.”

Explaining the situation to separated children was even harder. “The therapists and I would do a meeting with the child and use pictures or puppets. We would say, ‘Your daddy is really far,’ and kind of show them—‘this is Guatemala and this is the U.S., and you guys are far away.’ ” She learned not to give separated children any specific timeline for when they might see their parent again, because the children would latch on to those promises, however vague, and then ask about them constantly. “We would have to say, ‘In many, many days you will be reunited with your parent, but we have to do a lot of paperwork.’ ”

Supervisors at Bethany and other organizations that operate shelters repeatedly called Health and Human Services headquarters in Washington, pressing for details about what was going on, but they were given none. Don’t speak with the media, some were told.

Ignoring the Warnings

(July–December 2017)

When John Kelly left the Department of Homeland Security to become President Trump’s chief of staff in July 2017, Stephen Miller and Gene Hamilton moved in tandem to fill the power vacuum that Kelly’s departure created. They appeared determined to institute family separations nationwide.

Elaine Duke, Kelly’s deputy, became the acting Homeland Security secretary. Duke had only joined the Trump administration after being coaxed out of retirement by former colleagues desperate to fill the open positions at DHS. Within weeks of her taking over the department, she confronted two natural disasters—Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Maria—and Miller and Hamilton saw an opportunity in her distraction.

Miller phoned DHS staff day and night, barraging them with demands and bullying career bureaucrats into a putative consensus on his ideas. At a meeting that fall, Hamilton distributed a document listing more than a dozen immigration policies that he said the White House wanted implemented, according to several people who were present. At the top were two proposed methods of achieving family separations: either administratively—by placing children and parents in separate detention centers—or via criminal prosecutions, which would place parents in the Department of Justice’s custody instead of the Department of Homeland Security’s. In both cases, the children would be given to a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. (The El Paso pilot was still under way, unbeknownst to most people at DHS headquarters, including Duke.)

Duke declined to move forward with administrative separations, and sought advice about the prosecution initiative from John Kelly, who assured her that if the president wanted her to do something, he would have told her himself. Duke agreed and proceeded accordingly. “There was a disconnect between those that had strong feelings about the issues and those that could sign things,” Duke told me. “And I was the one with the authority to sign things.”

The majority of Duke’s staff were moderates. At this point, many of them told me, they still believed that Hamilton’s idea for separating families nationally was so outlandish that they didn’t take it seriously. “What I remember saying is ‘This is the most ridiculous proposal, so this doesn’t even require all that much work,’ ” a senior DHS official said. But Miller, recognizing Duke’s resistance, started going around her, to her chief of staff, Chad Wolf, who asked that the DHS policy office produce documentation supporting Hamilton’s proposals. Soon after, this official said, he “started getting phone calls from Chad Wolf, and you could tell he was under tremendous pressure, saying, ‘I gotta have that paperwork—where are we on the paperwork?’ And I said, ‘Chad, you know and I know this isn’t how government works. We’ve gotta get a lot of eyeballs on it. We have to find out if this is legal, moral, ethical, good policy, geared toward success, etc.’

“What followed was a lot of bad government,” the senior official continued. “Bad draft memos were put together. They went up the chain but were bad because they weren’t fully vetted policies.”

Several of the DHS officials who were present at the meeting with Hamilton told me that after a few weeks, talk about separating families petered out, so they assumed the idea had been abandoned, or at least put on hold. It hadn’t been—those who were perceived to be doubters were just excluded from subsequent meetings. “I think what I recall most is that I wasn’t in the discussions,” Duke said, adding that perhaps because she was viewed as a moderate, “I wasn’t in the inner circle.”

Inside and outside the government, people were beginning to notice that separations were already under way. Immigration lawyers who practiced in Texas and Arizona started reporting individual separation cases to national networks of advocates, who began drafting an official complaint to file with the DHS inspector general. Those advocates also began to share cases with reporters, who prepared stories about them. But the DHS press office insisted that no policies had changed.

Throughout the summer and fall, problems cropped up in the pilot regions. Under the guidelines imposed by Richard Durbin, who was still the acting U.S. attorney in El Paso, DOJ lawyers in the sector rejected two-thirds of the cases referred to them by Border Patrol. Despite that, some of the worst outcomes Durbin had anticipated and tried to prevent were indeed happening. “We have now heard of us taking breast feeding defendant moms away from their infants, I did not believe this until I looked at the duty log and saw the fact we had accepted prosecution on moms with one and two year olds,” Durbin’s deputy criminal chief wrote to him in August. “The next issue is that these parents are asking for the whereabouts of their children and they can’t get a response.”

FOIA records show that in the summer of 2017, the DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which serves as an internal watchdog for civil-rights violations by the agency, noted a dramatic uptick in complaints involving separations, but remained in the dark about what was driving them. The increase in separations was also being tracked by HHS. Shortly after the meeting on Valentine’s Day 2017 when the idea to separate families was presented, Jonathan White and several colleagues had begun an internal campaign to try to stop separations from happening.

Documents I obtained show that White took his concerns about the family-separation proposal to his superiors dozens of times, and asked them to inquire about it with DHS. He underscored that the HHS shelter system was not prepared to take a large number of separated children, who tend to be younger than those who cross the border alone, and require specialized housing that was in short supply. Hoping to catch the attention of others in the bureaucracy who might mobilize against the policy, White repeatedly inserted subtle references to looming family separations in internal and external reports that he wrote, even ones mostly unrelated to the subject. Meanwhile, his colleague James De La Cruz, an HHS administrator, began an effort to track every possible instance of separation, and to strategize about how to help reunite as many families as possible.

But White’s concerns were intercepted by his politically appointed boss, Scott Lloyd, who was not inclined to help him. Lloyd told me he has many relatives in policing and corrections; he was predisposed to support the views of law enforcement over those of his own department. “I had an affinity for DHS and just tended to take them at their word, and got annoyed when people didn’t,” he said.

Finally, in mid-November 2017, White managed to get Lloyd’s attention with an alarming email. “We had a shortage last night of beds for babies,” White wrote. “Overall, infant placements seem to be climbing over recent weeks, and we think that’s due to more separations from mothers by CBP. ” Lloyd requested a phone call with Kevin McAleenan, so that White could ask the acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner directly about what he was seeing. During the call, on November 16, McAleenan repeated Kelly’s statement that a separation policy had been considered but ultimately rejected. Lloyd would cling to this assurance for months—even when evidence seemed to call for action on his part. (Today, Lloyd says he believes the facts show that he acted appropriately.)

Jonathan White, who ran HHS’s shelter system for unaccompanied immigrant children, appealed to his bosses dozens of times to try to stop family separations from happening. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP)

White’s warning prompted McAleenan to ask his acting chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, Carla Provost, what was happening. Provost learned about the El Paso initiative from Gloria Chavez, one of her deputies, and immediately shut the program down. “It has not blown up in the media as of yet but of course has the potential to,” Provost wrote to McAleenan. After this clear indication that the pilot could be controversial, McAleenan and others at CBP did not disclose the fact that it had ever existed, even to other government agencies that were dealing with its consequences.

At the end of November, a Border Patrol employee emailed several colleagues, including Chavez, asking how to respond to questions from a reporter from the Houston Chronicle, Lomi Kriel, who had been tipped off about the initiative. By this point, Chavez not only knew about the pilot; she had been chastised for not alerting her superiors about it earlier. Yet the Border Patrol spokesperson who ultimately responded to Kriel cited an old policy manual stating that agency protocol required maintaining family unity “to the greatest extent operationally feasible.” (Provost and Chavez both declined to comment for this story.)

Kriel’s article foreshadowed what would go wrong under a nationwide program the following year—problems that DHS officials who served under Trump now claim they never could have anticipated. “There aren’t mechanisms in place to systematically allow a parent or child to locate one another once they have been separated,” an NGO told Kriel. “Family members lose track of each other.”

In December, immigration advocates filed their complaint with the DHS inspector general’s office detailing the experiences of more than a dozen separated families, which prompted CBP officials to meet with the agency’s chief counsel, according to records obtained through a FOIA request. The complaint, which was shared with Congress and the media, noted that separated children were ending up in shelters in different states, as far away as New York.

For months afterward, in response to questions from reporters, representatives of DHS would continue to say that there had been no change in the agency’s treatment of parents traveling with children, not acknowledging that the pilot program had already separated hundreds of children from their parents.

In January 2018, warning of potential “permanent family separation” and “new populations of U.S. Orphans,” documents I obtained show that the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties recommended that criteria be established to prevent the separation of very young or especially vulnerable children. They also recommended that an online database be created that family members could use to find one another in the detention system. This tool, if it had been created, would have proved immeasurably valuable the following year, when thousands of parents were searching for their children.

The Border Patrol’s internal summary of the pilot program, which has not been reported on until now, also highlights potential issues such as children getting lost or ending up in long-term foster care. The document repeats versions of the phrase family separation more than 10 times. Despite that, CBP leaders said they were not made aware of any problems that came up during the program.

Ambient Ignorance

(December 2017–May 2018)

By the end of 2017, DHS and White House officials say, Stephen Miller appeared to be losing patience with Elaine Duke, who had refused to sign off on any of his major plans. Rather than continue to argue with the acting DHS secretary, the White House Hawks started looking for a replacement.

Discussion centered on Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who had made a career out of pushing controversial anti-immigrant policies. John Kelly worried about someone like Kobach overseeing DHS. So he floated Kirstjen Nielsen, who had worked with him at the agency and come with him to the White House as his No. 2. Trump accepted Kelly’s recommendation, perhaps thinking that Nielsen would be pliable. According to colleagues, Gene Hamilton was so upset when the president chose a moderate to run DHS that he went to work for his former boss Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department, thinking he could have more of an impact on aggressive immigration restrictions from there.

It is somewhat ironic that the person most associated with the Trump administration’s harshest immigration policy turned out to be Nielsen. She signed the memo allowing Border Patrol agents to take children away from their parents so that the adults could be prosecuted. But Nielsen had not wanted to sign off on Zero Tolerance; for months, she refused to do so. In fact, throughout her tenure as secretary, Nielsen would be accused by administration colleagues of being a “squish” over and over again. Each time, she would go a little further in order to appease her critics. Eventually, she followed them off a cliff.

Compared with many of her hard-line colleagues at DHS, Nielsen was technocratic and restrained. After graduating from Georgetown and the University of Virginia School of Law, she had worked at a private law firm in Texas, until September 11 motivated her to take a position with the newly established Transportation Security Administration (soon to become part of DHS); she also worked in the Bush White House and over time became one of the country’s foremost experts on cybersecurity policy.

Nielsen’s own employees noted that she had considerably less leadership experience than any previous DHS secretary, and some took issue with that. Before joining the Trump administration, she had run a consulting company that had a handful of employees. Now she was leading an agency that employed a quarter of a million people. She was exceptionally hardworking, but in a way that didn’t always endear her to colleagues. “She read 80-page briefs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” one high-ranking DHS official told me, adding that in meetings, Nielsen “asked questions that embarrassed you because she knew more than you did about what you were supposed to be doing.”

Nielsen was defensive about any criticism of the department. Unlike Kelly, who had let staffers sift through the pile of news clips published about DHS and only share with him the ones they deemed important, Nielsen devoured them on her way to work each morning, pillorying staff because she hadn’t been alerted beforehand about negative stories. But in the eyes of key advisers and staff, anything the press wrote was inherently suspect—likely liberal hysteria. Because of this, they viewed Nielsen’s demands for inquiries into allegations of wrongdoing by DHS staff as an annoying waste of time. By the time family separations were being described in the national media, much of her staff didn’t believe what was being reported, even when clear evidence supported it.

The DHS that Nielsen took control of was virtually unrecognizable compared with the one that she had worked for when it was started under President Bush. Its energy was now directed toward the southwestern border, with much less attention focused on other matters, including the issue that had sparked its creation: global terrorism. Nielsen was being summoned to the White House so often to talk about immigration that she started working out of a makeshift office at the nearby CBP headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, which put her in close proximity with her immigration-enforcement chiefs, Tom Homan and Kevin McAleenan.

From the moment she was confirmed, Nielsen fielded a barrage of immigration-policy proposals from Stephen Miller, which he conveyed through incessant phone calls, day and night. When John Kelly was secretary, he would ignore Miller’s late-night calls. But Nielsen frequently found herself listening to him rant after midnight.

Nielsen would hear Miller out, knowing that his approval was crucial to her success in the job. “I would say, ‘Okay, Stephen, we’ll have a meeting on it; we’ll get the lawyers and we’ll figure out what’s possible and we’ll talk it through,’ ” she told me. “Or I’d say to him, ‘Have you talked to anyone at CBP? Did you talk to anybody at HHS? Did you talk to the lawyers? What does [White House Counsel] Don McGahn say?’ It would just be him saying stuff and me being like, ‘Okay, Stephen, let’s find a process here. I don’t just make policy on phone calls with you. We have a whole department that I run.’ ”

Elaine Duke served as acting Homeland Security secretary after John Kelly became White House chief of staff. She declined to sign off on family separation and was soon sidelined. (Justin Sullivan / AFP / Getty)

By this point, Miller had insinuated himself deep into DHS, identifying allies at its lower rungs who either agreed with him or were open to persuasion. Under the traditional chain of command, only a department’s senior leadership has direct contact with the White House, to prevent miscommunications and decisions being made by people lacking authority. Now random employees throughout DHS were speaking directly with Miller and his team, who would then claim to have buy-in for their ideas “from DHS.”

Miller’s incursions extended to the communications department. For example, he requested photos of detained immigrants with tattoos, presumably to suggest that most of those crossing the border were hardened criminals. When he faced pushback, Lauren Tomlinson, a senior DHS communications aide, told me, “a phone call would go to someone else further down the chain, and the next thing you know, they’ve got the photos. They would just keep calling until they got to yeses.”

[Adam Serwer: The cruelty is the point]

Miller blocked numerous candidates to replace Gene Hamilton as senior counselor to the DHS secretary, apparently intent on assuming the role informally himself. Nielsen’s staff learned not to bring Miller any job candidates who had served in the Bush administration, because they would be automatically rejected. A handful of people cycled through the position over the next several months, but none lasted long, because “no one could pass the Miller smell test,” a senior DHS official recalled.

Soon after Nielsen’s confirmation in December, colleagues of Kevin McAleenan say that he began to agitate for a meeting about rising border crossings, which the White House was pressuring him to contain. Like Nielsen, he’d pursued work in Homeland Security after 9/11, leaving behind a career in corporate law. In the Trump era, he was also under pressure to prove that he wasn’t a squish. He had leapfrogged over those in CBP leadership who’d worked their way up from the front lines of the Border Patrol and who tended to view leadership recruits with posh résumés as “street hires.” Brandon Judd, the head of the Border Patrol union, may have been McAleenan’s most influential skeptic. Judd maintained close access to Trump after winning his affection with an early endorsement in 2016, and occasionally attended private Oval Office meetings where he lobbied for McAleenan to be fired for being too weak on enforcement.

But McAleenan navigated this terrain deftly. He could pass as a Hawk, professing an adherence to the gospel of deterrence, but moderates and progressives on Capitol Hill appreciated that he was more polished than his brasher colleagues during congressional briefings. He made abundant use of Latin phrases (sui generis, ex ante, ex post facto) and words like confirmatory, even during small talk. In meetings, he rattled off facts and statistics with such facility that people were reluctant to challenge him. During his frequent media appearances, he outlined harsh enforcement policies, coming off not as someone who felt strongly about them one way or the other, but as the coolheaded adult in the room who was making sure they were implemented smoothly. Over time, more than 15 of McAleenan’s colleagues told me, he became one of the most vocal advocates for Zero Tolerance.

Chad Wolf, who was now Nielsen’s acting chief of staff, told McAleenan that if he wanted a meeting with Nielsen about the rising number of border crossings, he first needed to put together a proposal with possible solutions for her to study. Nielsen liked to be well prepared ahead of meetings, to avoid being put on the spot about issues she hadn’t fully considered. This ended up being a primary way that extreme immigration policies were delayed under Nielsen: She would ask questions in meetings that her staff was not prepared to answer, then send them off to look for more information.

As secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen signed the memo that authorized Border Patrol agents to take children from their parents. (U.S. Department of Homeland Security)

“There was a joke we all had, because everything needed sign-off from the secretary,” John Zadrozny, of the White House Domestic Policy Council, told me. “So we’d get something up to the secretary’s desk, and weeks would go by where we hadn’t gotten something back, and we’re like, ‘Where is this?’ ‘Oh, it’s on the secretary’s desk, hahaha.’ Meaning it sat there because she didn’t want to deal with it … We were basically always pushing Jell-O up a hill.”

When McAleenan and Homan ultimately presented a set of ideas to Nielsen, she and others who were there say, they started by proposing separating families administratively. (Homan says he doesn’t recall this.) This would have allowed the agency to separate not only families that crossed the border illegally but also those who presented themselves at legal ports of entry, requesting asylum. Nielsen rejected the idea out of hand, invoking John Kelly’s prior decision, which she told the men she viewed as standing DHS policy. Homan and McAleenan shot back that border crossings had increased since Kelly’s tenure as secretary and that other strategies to quell them weren’t working. “My response was more or less ‘I agree we need to do something big,’ ” Nielsen told me. “ ‘Let’s talk about realistic options.’ ”

McAleenan and Homan then began to describe an initiative to prosecute all adults—including those traveling with children—who crossed the border illegally, telling Nielsen that a pilot program along these lines had already been successfully implemented in El Paso and that the prosecutions could serve as a deterrent on a larger scale.

Nielsen was upset that a pilot had been implemented, seemingly in defiance of Kelly’s orders. She asked how the border-enforcement apparatus would absorb the burden of so many additional prosecutions. McAleenan and Homan, who was now the head of ICE, testily assured her that the agencies involved “had a process”—without specifying what it was. Unsatisfied with their responses, Nielsen ended the meeting by telling them to run down answers to her questions and report back.

Elizabeth Neumann, Nielsen’s deputy chief of staff, told me she was shaken by the nonchalance with which McAleenan and Homan had proposed taking vast numbers of children away from their parents. “They were not grasping the humanity of the situation; they were just all about ‘I need Stephen [Miller] off my back. I need the president off my back,’ ” she said. (McAleenan denies this account.)

After the meeting, Neumann, who had spent more than a decade working with Nielsen in and out of government, said she approached another top adviser to ask whether taking children from their parents was truly being considered. If the answer was yes, she was planning to lobby against it. The colleague told Neumann that Nielsen was holding firm against separating families. “I was really relieved because I didn’t feel I had to have the next conversation,” Neumann said.

What she didn’t realize was that the second proposal—to refer for prosecution every adult coming across the border illegally—would have the same result, and was still on the table.

Across Washington, a new immigration-prosecution initiative that was being considered by the White House came up in various meetings. But the blandness with which it was described—as a way to crack down on lawbreakers—served as a sleight of hand. Because fluency on immigration policy is so rare in Washington, few people grasped the full implications of what was being suggested until it was already happening.

As Nielsen debated these proposals, my sources at DHS alerted me to their existence. Once I’d confirmed the details, The New York Times published my report in December 2017, which included the story of a father and his 1-year-old son who had already been separated. The Washington Post published a story about the proposals the same day. The response both papers got from the DHS press office not only failed to acknowledge that separations were already taking place; it also characterized families seeking asylum in the United States as abusive to their own children: “It’s cruel for parents to place the lives of their children in the hands of transnational criminal organizations and smugglers who have zero respect for human life and often abuse or abandon children. The dangerous illegal journey north is no place for young children and we need to explore all possible measures to protect them.” The statement alluded to “procedural, policy, regulatory and legislative changes” that would be implemented “in the near future.”

Unlike Kirstjen Nielsen, Jeff Sessions is exactly the sort of person one might expect to be responsible for a policy that would result in widespread family separations. Throughout his career, his approach to both criminal justice and immigration enforcement could be defined by the phrase zero tolerance, a law-enforcement term of art that is almost always used euphemistically, because snuffing out all crime is impossible. But for Sessions, the phrase is literal. He supported enforcing all laws—or at least the ones that he deemed important—to the fullest extent possible, with no room for nuance or humanitarian exception.

In interviews, DHS officials blamed Sessions for ordering the separation of thousands of families. Some of Sessions’s own staff at the Justice Department blamed him as well. Gene Hamilton and Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who are revealed to have pushed persistently for Zero Tolerance in a report published by the DOJ inspector general, told the IG’s office that they did so solely at the behest of Sessions. (Sessions says that the report appeared to be politically biased, pointing to the fact that it had been leaked prior to the 2020 election. He says President Trump had clearly ordered the executive branch “to reduce the immigration lawlessness at the border.” Rosenstein declined to comment for this article.)

Though it is true that Sessions pushed hard for aggressive immigration-enforcement policies, including Zero Tolerance, nothing I found in my reporting suggests that prosecuting parents traveling with children was his idea, and nothing that he did as attorney general, from a legal perspective, caused the policy to come into being.

Exactly how much Sessions even understood about Zero Tolerance is unclear. He is not, former colleagues say, one to get entangled in details, or to let facts get in the way of what he thinks is a good idea. Sessions was distracted during his tenure as attorney general, battling constant rumors that he had had untoward interactions with Russian operatives. He was also trying to salvage his relationship with President Trump, who never forgave Sessions for recusing himself from the congressional inquiry into Trump’s own ties to Russia.

On May 7, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions held a press conference in San Diego to publicize the Zero Tolerance policy. (Ariana Drehsler / Bloomberg / Getty)

In a functioning bureaucracy, none of this should have presented any great impediment to Sessions’s understanding of Zero Tolerance: A Cabinet secretary generally makes decisions based on the recommendations presented by advisers, which in turn are based on expert analysis. But Sessions’s principal immigration adviser was Gene Hamilton. As one of the only DOJ staff members fully dedicated to the subject, Hamilton worked in relative isolation, with few colleagues to challenge his positions. And Hamilton showed an unwillingness to take seriously any of the policy’s pitfalls that he was alerted to before and during its execution.

As Hamilton prepared to formally propose Zero Tolerance to Sessions, Rosenstein’s office asked John Bash, the newly confirmed U.S. attorney in El Paso, for a briefing on the separation pilot program there. Bash had previously served as a White House legal adviser and was considered a trusted Trump ally. Bash asked his new colleagues in El Paso to bring him up to speed on the pilot, according to email excerpts that were published by the DOJ inspector general. He then briefed Hamilton and others at DOJ. His notes indicate that the initiative had faced “significant ‘pushback’ ” from local stakeholders; they also reference pending litigation in the Western District of Texas filed on behalf of five people whose children (and in one case a grandchild) had been taken away from them. The magistrate judge in that case complained that the defendants before him were “completely incommunicado” with their children “while being prosecuted for a very minor offense” and that parents and children had no apparent way to find each other after being separated.

Hamilton later told the inspector general that he didn’t remember the meeting. This is the first of many documented instances—all of which he would later tell the inspector general he could not recall—when Hamilton was warned directly about the problems that would take place if the pilot was expanded nationwide. He forged ahead anyway.

A few weeks later, Bash received a memo from his colleagues explaining in even greater detail problems that had arisen during the prosecution pilot. But headquarters hadn’t followed up with him about expanding it, so he didn’t share the memo with anyone, and he later told the inspector general that he’d assumed the idea had died. No one at headquarters ever contacted Richard Durbin—the acting U.S. attorney in El Paso during the pilot program who had been told that infants were being separated from their mothers—for his input.

Meanwhile, immigration advocates were still learning of families that had been separated during the pilot but had not yet been reunited. They were also hearing reports of families that had been separated after presenting themselves at a port, where it is perfectly legal to request entry to the United States. The advocates prepared to file a lawsuit, which they hoped would result in a nationwide injunction against separations and a court order to reunify the families that had already been torn apart. Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, would lead the case. “It’s not just that the parents and children are separated for months and months,” Gelernt told me at the time. “It’s that the parents have no idea where their children are, what’s happening to their children, or whether they are even going to see their children again.”

Gelernt was gathering tips from advocates with connections to shelter workers in the Department of Health and Human Services, who defied orders not to speak publicly about what was happening, out of concern over what they were seeing. The shelter workers “don’t even know where the kids are coming from, who the parent is, where the parent is,” Gelernt told me. “They are 2, 3, 4, 5 years old.”

During this period, each time I asked Trump-administration officials about a specific case, they would say that the separation had taken place only because the child was thought to be caught in a trafficking scheme or otherwise in danger, which would have been in keeping with past policies. But in many of these cases, lawyers representing the families said none of those circumstances held true.

In February 2018, Gelernt met a woman from the Democratic Republic of Congo who had been separated from her 6-year-old daughter. The girl had spent several months in an HHS shelter in Chicago; her mother was being held in an immigration detention center in the desert on the outskirts of San Diego. When she walked into a cinder-block room to meet Gelernt, she appeared gaunt and confused—“almost catatonic from what had happened to her,” Gelernt told me. The woman explained that when she and her daughter had crossed the border, agents had taken them to a motel for questioning—a common practice when border facilities run out of space—and put them in adjacent rooms. Because the mother and daughter, who became known in court as Ms. L and S.S., respectively, had been living in South America before requesting asylum in the United States, S.S. had picked up Spanish. When the agents began to discuss separating the girl from her mother, perhaps thinking that they were being discreet by speaking in Spanish, Ms. L heard her daughter’s screams through the wall between them.

Though Gelernt had been planning to build a case for a class-action suit, he was so disturbed by the meeting that he began drafting a complaint on Ms. L’s behalf as soon as he returned from the detention center. “Her child’s been gone for nearly four months,” he told me at the time, “and I just could not justify delaying going into court any longer to get her and her child reunited. Hearing her talk about her child screaming ‘Don’t take me away from my mommy.’ ”

While they waited for a ruling on the Ms. L case, Gelernt and his colleagues scrambled to prepare filings for other plaintiffs, quickly adding another mother, known as Ms. C, who had been separated from her 14-year-old son during the El Paso pilot six months earlier. (Ms. C had ended up in West Texas; her son had landed in a shelter in Chicago.) At this point, the ACLU asked the judge to certify the case as a class action, estimating, based on accounts it had collected—some from concerned government sources—that at least 400 to 500 separations had occurred by then.

The government responded to Gelernt’s suit in a legal briefing with the same message that reporters kept hearing—that the Department of Homeland Security did not have a separation policy and that nothing had changed in its treatment of migrant families. The response did not acknowledge the existence of any pilot program. “Such a policy,” the government’s brief stated, “would be antithetical to the child welfare values of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.”

The government argued that agents had separated Ms. L from her daughter because they were skeptical that the pair were truly related; Ms. L had not provided documents proving she was the child’s mother. Gelernt thought this was merely a pretense to justify the separation. “She spent three months walking here,” Gelernt told me. “She was robbed. So of course she didn’t have documents.” A judge called for a DNA test, which proved that Ms. L was in fact S.S.’s mother. Soon after, the government released Ms. L onto the street outside the desert detention center. Several days later, with the help of lawyers, Ms. L was reunited with her daughter.

In the spring of 2018, I learned about the list of separated children that James De La Cruz, Jonathan White’s colleague at the Office of Refugee Resettlement, was compiling. De La Cruz and a handful of others at ORR were using the list to seek help from ICE in tracking down the parents of those children and trying to reunify them, or at least connect them by phone—many of the separated parents were still detained or had been deported. De La Cruz and the small group of his colleagues who had access to the list were keeping its existence quiet, knowing that the document would be controversial because the administration was still publicly denying that children were being separated from their parents at the border with any greater frequency than under previous administrations.

Most of those with access to the list initially told me they worried that a news article about it could be traced back to them—or worse, that it might somehow jeopardize what, at the time, was the only known effort to track family-separation cases. But by early April, the list grew to include more than 700 names—enough that my sources began to conclude that the situation was too dire to go unreported any longer. And they knew that the total number of separations was even higher: The list contained only the names of children whose cases had been reported to HHS headquarters by shelter staff.

At that point, I contacted the HHS and DHS public-affairs offices at the same time, letting them know that I was preparing to publish a story about the list of separated children, and asking them to confirm its authenticity. Mark Weber, an HHS spokesperson, says he called Katie Waldman, a DHS spokesperson who later married Stephen Miller. Waldman yelled at him, telling him that DHS was not separating children from their parents. (Waldman told me the same, saying that I would be misleading the American public if I published my story as planned.) But Weber’s own colleagues at HHS eventually acknowledged, according to emails that were made public later as part of a congressional inquiry, that De La Cruz was keeping track of separations. When Weber went back to Waldman, telling her that he planned to corroborate my story, he says that Waldman and her boss, Tyler Houlton, insisted that he officially deny that DHS was separating families any more than in the past. “They made me lie,” Weber told me recently. (Waldman said Weber’s memory of the conversation is not accurate; Houlton did not respond to a request for comment.) Waldman and Houlton provided a statement for my Times story, insisting that families were not being separated for the purposes of prosecution and deterrence. All the while, separations were still increasing. By April 23, three days after the story was published, documents show that De La Cruz had tracked 856 separations, more than a quarter of which involved children younger than 5.

When my Times story came out, Scott Lloyd, De La Cruz’s boss, was distressed. “I was just like, ‘Why do we have a list?’ ” Lloyd told me recently. “It looked like ORR keeping tabs on DHS. And possibly leaking it to The New York Times.” Lloyd asked ORR staff to stop adding to the list, because the document made “it look like something that isn’t happening is happening, because I didn’t know there to be any sort of a zero-tolerance policy.” But De La Cruz told Lloyd he felt the list was necessary to ensure that the children would be reunited with their families. He continued adding to it.

Through the early spring of 2018, border crossings continued to rise. Fox News commentators took note of the trend and blamed Kirstjen Nielsen. Stephen Miller prompted the president to chastise her. Knowing that Trump did not like to read official reports, Miller would instead print out articles by a few choice immigration reporters at right-wing outlets and leave them on the president’s desk, saying they were evidence that Nielsen was a bad leader. Soon, Nielsen was being summoned to the West Wing for even more frequent—sometimes daily—meetings about what to do. The discussions consisted mostly of Miller ranting about how the ideas he’d been pitching for months had needlessly stalled. Jeff Sessions would sometimes pile on, telling the president that Nielsen was being gutless, allowing him—if only temporarily—to escape Trump’s ire himself. Once, Sessions told Trump that Nielsen could simply choose not to let people cross the border, but was refusing to do so. Trump screamed at Nielsen, making her Cabinet colleagues deeply uncomfortable. Kelly stepped in and tried to adjourn the meeting, but he stayed quiet about the specific policies.

Indeed, the limitation of Kelly’s approach to opposing Zero Tolerance may have been that, in front of the Hawks, he focused on his logistical concerns. Kelly felt that approach was the most likely to stop the policy from being implemented, but the Hawks now say they didn’t register Kelly’s general opposition to it, only that he thought it would require additional resources. (Kelly says his opposition to separating families was plainly clear throughout his tenure in the administration.)

According to colleagues, Tom Homan and Kevin McAleenan continued to minimize the significance of Zero Tolerance, saying that they merely wanted to increase enforcement of laws already on the books. “Under what authority do you tell the police ‘Don’t enforce law’?” Nielsen told me McAleenan said to her. “He was basically like, ‘Look, you’re not allowing me to do my job. We need to stop having the conversation and just move forward and do this.’ ” (McAleenan says he never suggested that the policy was uncontroversial and that he raised logistical concerns with Nielsen repeatedly. Homan says he never pressured Nielsen.)

Children are led through a detention center in Tornillo, Texas, in June 2018. (Mike Blake / Reuters / Alamy)

Nielsen still didn’t feel she had enough information to make a decision: Did Border Patrol stations have the capacity to house additional migrants waiting to be sent to court? Did the Justice Department have enough lawyers to take on extra cases? Did the U.S. Marshals have enough vehicles to transport separated parents? What would happen to the children while the prosecutions were carried out? Nielsen and her colleagues say that McAleenan and Homan were dismissive, the implication being that it was not her job as secretary to get mired in enforcement details; she was micromanaging.

Every key member of the Trump administration’s DHS leadership team whom I interviewed told me that separations were never meant to play out as they did. But when I asked them to explain how separations, prosecutions, and reunifications were supposed to have worked, every one of them gave me a different version of the plan. Some said they thought that parents and children were going to be reunited on an airport tarmac and deported together. Others said they thought that after being prosecuted, parents would go back to Border Patrol stations, where their children would be waiting. Others thought that kids would be sent to HHS facilities for only a few days. But it doesn’t really matter which plan was supposed to have prevailed: None of them was feasible or had any precedent. This points to how little knowledge of the system most of these people had and how unclear communication was throughout what passed for the planning process.

In early April 2018, Stephen Miller, Gene Hamilton, and Kevin McAleenan (who had recently been confirmed as the CBP commissioner) began citing various documents to insist that Nielsen was violating a lawful order by delaying the implementation of Zero Tolerance, according to colleagues. One was an executive order, “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” crafted by Miller and his faction during the transition and issued in January 2017. It was clearly directed toward ICE, which operates in the interior of the country, unlike the Border Patrol. But by refusing to command Border Patrol agents to refer parents for prosecution, the Hawks said, Nielsen was violating a clause in the order that stated, “We cannot faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States if we exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”

Two new documents were issued on the same day, April 6, 2018, perhaps to increase the pressure on Nielsen. In one, Jeff Sessions officially announced a new “zero-tolerance policy,” under which U.S. attorneys would, “to the extent practicable,” accept 100 percent of the illegal-entry cases referred to them by the Border Patrol. (Sessions had also issued a similar memo the year before.) The second, a presidential memorandum, called generally for the end of “catch and release” immigration enforcement. Materially, the documents did not mean much for the Border Patrol, which Nielsen, a lawyer, theoretically should have known: Sessions had no authority over that agency, including over which cases its agents referred for prosecution. And Trump’s memo didn’t contain any specific directives regarding parents traveling with children.

The Border Patrol could have continued processing families the same way it always had without violating any law or order. Records show that Border Patrol sectors even received guidance indicating that Sessions’s initiative applied only to adults traveling without children. But colleagues say that McAleenan, Hamilton, and Miller again told Nielsen that by declining to refer parents traveling with children for prosecution, she was defying orders.

As the Zero Tolerance announcement was hyped to Nielsen for its alleged importance, it was played down to the U.S. attorneys whom it would ultimately affect. Originally, they were told that Sessions’s memo was no big deal. According to the DOJ inspector general’s report, Sessions had asked Hamilton to “ensure it was workable, and there were no red flags,” before writing it. But Hamilton didn’t do that. Instead DOJ asked for feedback on the document from the five U.S. attorneys stationed along the southwestern border—without making clear to them that it would change the department’s treatment of migrant families. The attorneys later told the inspector general that they assumed parents would continue to be exempt from prosecutions for illegal entry, as they had been for the entirety of DHS’s history. Ryan Patrick, the U.S. attorney in South Texas, told me that each time “zero tolerance” messaging came up, DOJ officials told him explicitly that his district was already doing plenty to combat illegal immigration and that he could disregard the initiative.

Again and again, Gene Hamilton ignored or rejected anything suggesting that the execution of a policy that separated children from their parents would create moral, legal, or logistical problems. When I asked a close colleague of Hamilton’s at the Justice Department why Hamilton was so persistent about moving the policy forward, she took a guess based on her own experience: “Stephen Miller told him to.” She added, “Stephen Miller often told people that if they tried to work through the system that they would get pushback … so it was really important for that person to just go around the system and do it themselves and circumvent the chain.”

“For Stephen and Gene,” she told me, “anything that got stalled was evidence of the failure of the system,” not of any weakness in their policy ideas.

Beyond actual experts, official Washington has very little knowledge of how the immigration system works. (Immigration “is a career killer,” Lauren Tomlinson, the senior DHS communications aide, told me. “You can’t solve it. All you’re gonna do is piss everyone off.”) Still, in retrospect, it is astonishing how many people throughout the federal government were engaged in conversations about a policy that would result in prolonged family separations apparently without realizing it.

This ambient ignorance enabled the Hawks to hoodwink the Careerists, and to make certain facts appear more benign than they were. Kirstjen Nielsen and members of her inner circle all told me they recalled constantly hearing the line “We’ve done this before” in reference to prosecuting parents and separating them from their children; Kevin McAleenan and Tom Homan and their respective staffs repeated that line incessantly. Nielsen, Scott Lloyd, and others said they understood this to mean that Border Patrol agents under previous administrations had done the same thing.

When I first heard this argument from one of Nielsen’s advisers, I assumed that he had misspoken or that I had misheard. It seemed preposterous that he didn’t know separating children from their parents was not something that had been done on any significant scale. But then I heard it again from Nielsen and her senior staff. Some of them told me they remembered hearing certain statistics—that 10 or 15 percent of parents had been referred for prosecution in the past. Others said that the details were never clear, or that the White House or Justice Department would claim it didn’t keep data on that. These officials said they believed that the idea Nielsen was debating was nothing new. “It just seemed like a nonissue that I shouldn’t spend any time on,” May Davis, who held various roles in the Trump White House, recalled.

When I would tell these officials, including Nielsen, that parents traveling with a child had rarely been prosecuted in the past, they sounded shocked. Those who reportedly gave these assurances about the policy, including Homan, McAleenan, and Ron Vitiello, the acting deputy commissioner of CBP, all denied doing so; some suggested that the DHS secretary and her advisers must simply be confused.

Kevin McAleenan, one of Kirstjen Nielsen’s top deputies, pushed her to sign off on family separation. He was later named acting secretary of Homeland Security. (Mark Wilson / Getty)

The relentless pressure from the White House Hawks seemed to be wearing on Kevin McAleenan. Caravans of asylum seekers from Central America had formed, headed for the United States, and 24-hour coverage of them incited a new level of panic in the administration about border crossings. After debating the idea for months, McAleenan took his most direct step to push for prosecuting parents, knowing that they would be separated from their children by the Border Patrol. In an email dated April 19, 2018, to Tom Homan and Francis Cissna, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, he stated his intent to formally recommend the idea to Nielsen.

“Please see a draft decision memorandum proposing increased prosecution (toward 100%) of all adults who cross illegally, whether they present as single adults or in family units,” McAleenan wrote. “I do believe that this approach would have the greatest impact on the rising numbers, which continue to be of great concern.” He said he planned to send the memo to Nielsen by close of business the next day, adding that even without their support, “I am prepared to submit solo.”

Homan and Cissna decided to sign on. McAleenan now says the email was only a “small snapshot” of a larger bureaucratic process in which he was just following directions.

Nielsen received the memo with annoyance, feeling squeezed by her own subordinates. Attached was a legal analysis by John Mitnick, the top lawyer at DHS, who found that “although it would be legally permissible to separate adults and minors as outlined above, any such decisions will face legal challenges.” He warned that a court could find family separations on a large scale, without any proven mechanism for swift reunification after prosecutions, in violation of “various laws or the Fifth Amendment due process clause.” (Though Mitnick’s analysis is written with lawyerly detachment, a White House staffer who attended a meeting about Zero Tolerance with him in April said that he was “freaking out” about the litigation risks associated with the policy.)

Nielsen told me she supported the idea of prosecuting all those who crossed the border illegally, including parents traveling with their children, but she feared that DHS was not logistically prepared to implement the policy without causing chaos in courts and detention centers, and losing track of parents and children. She asked the White House to allow her to defer her decision on the program for six months so she could travel to Central America herself and announce that the policy was imminent, in hopes that doing so would encourage families that needed to seek asylum to use legal ports of entry. Stephen Miller was unwilling to wait. Nielsen told me he claimed to be in contact with Border Patrol officials who were eager to get started. With him, Nielsen said, “the tone is always frantic. ‘The sky is falling, the world is ending, it’s going to be all your fault. The president promised this, and we have to deliver on the promise.’ ”

“The White House was growing frustrated” with the delays, an adviser to Nielsen told me. “They basically said, ‘Look, the attorney general gave you a lawful order. You need to execute it.’ ” This was not true. “And we kept pushing back. Eventually the pressure got to be just overwhelming.” McAleenan and Homan were saying, “We’re ready to go. We’re ready to go. We’re ready to go. We’ve got it in place. We’ve got a good battle rhythm with DOJ. We can do this.”

None of the other agencies that would be affected by Zero Tolerance had been alerted to what was looming. That included the Department of Health and Human Services. “I don’t know how to say this delicately, so I’ll just say it: It’s really not like HHS’s opinion mattered here,” John Zadrozny told me, explaining that because HHS did not have any authority over immigration policy, it was not uncommon for the department to be left out of such discussions. Zadrozny said that although he did not recall a specific decision to keep the Zero Tolerance policy secret from HHS, it wouldn’t surprise him if there was one. “There were times when we were having meetings where we would specifically say, ‘Keep HHS out of it; they’re just going to babble and cause problems. They’re not actually going to be helpful.’ ”

Astonishing as this sounds, it seems that no one at the department that would be charged with taking care of thousands of separated children was given any official warning that the Zero Tolerance program was in the offing. “We did not find evidence that DOJ leadership had discussions about the zero tolerance policy or family separations with HHS prior to the announcement,” the inspector general’s report later concluded.

At the end of April, several developments took place almost at once. Gene Hamilton’s office asked the five U.S. attorneys who were stationed in southwestern border districts if their staffs had seen an increase in prosecution referrals for parents traveling with children based on Sessions’s April memo, and if not, when they expected to. The email was written as if the attorneys should have known that a change was coming, but their response made clear that this was, in fact, the first notice they had received that the treatment of families would change. The attorneys issued a joint response stating that none of the five districts had the resources to handle the increased volume of cases that prosecuting parents would create. “This change in policy would result in new referrals of 20 to 400 cases per day, depending on the district,” the U.S. attorneys wrote. Furthermore, Homeland Security and Border Patrol would not be able to process these cases fast enough. “The medical screening for TB, chicken pox, measles; much less the processing of these individuals in establishing identity, alienage, criminal and/or immigration history, etc. would be practically impossible to accomplish within the constitutionally mandated time constraints.” Hamilton would later tell the inspector general that he’d “missed” the response from the U.S. attorneys—which was one he’d requested—and that he was not aware that the U.S. attorneys had raised these specific concerns about prosecuting parents.

Rich Hunter, the second-highest-ranking official in the U.S. Marshals Service in South Texas, heard about what was coming from a colleague who had been tipped off by a friend at the Justice Department. The Marshals are responsible for housing pretrial detainees facing federal criminal charges, including border crossers, and transporting them to court for their hearings. Even in normal circumstances, their facilities along the border are constantly at capacity. Under the influx of new detainees that a zero-tolerance policy would bring, Hunter anticipated that the system would break down.

“The more and more information we got, it just painted a bleaker and bleaker picture for us,” Hunter told me. “I could see the impact headed down the tracks straight at us, and no one had talked to us. No one had prepared us for this. No one had asked us, ‘Do you have space for this? Do you have resources, manpower?’ ” Hunter helped produce a report that was delivered to the Justice Department on April 27. It stated that the Marshals—like the U.S. attorneys—did not have the resources to implement Zero Tolerance. The Marshals sent copies of the report to Jeff Sessions’s office and to Rod Rosenstein, who would later push DOJ attorneys to apply the policy as aggressively as possible. Both Hamilton and Rosenstein would tell the DOJ inspector general that they were unaware of any problems with Zero Tolerance raised by the Marshals—yet another warning they claim to have missed.

That same week, McAleenan’s memo pressing Nielsen to activate Zero Tolerance was leaked to The Washington Post, which published an article about it on April 26. To this day, it is not clear whether the memo was leaked by those who supported Zero Tolerance or those who opposed it. Many speculated that opponents of the program had leaked it in order to generate popular blowback and make the policy’s implementation less likely. But if that’s the case, the scheme backfired. After the Post article appeared, the pressure on Nielsen to authorize Zero Tolerance only increased. “It seemed like Kirstjen was sitting on all these memos and wouldn’t do anything,” Lauren Tomlinson recalled.

In early May, Miller convened yet another meeting about Zero Tolerance, in the Situation Room. Nielsen says she started listing all the reasons the department was not ready to move forward. “First Stephen said, ‘We’ve had this meeting a million times—who thinks despite all of that we need more time?’ ” Nielsen told me. She raised her hand—the only person in the room to do so. “The follow-up from Stephen was ‘Okay, who thinks we just need to go forward? We’re done talking about this.’ And at that point, I remember what felt like a sea of hands.”

According to notes that he prepared, Hamilton acknowledged that separated children would be sent to HHS. To anyone familiar with HHS’s operations, this would have immediately indicated that the government would face significant barriers in trying to bring parents and children back together—among them, children and parents would be separated by hundreds of miles because of the way HHS placements typically work, and many parents would not qualify to regain custody of their own children under the requirements for sponsoring a child officially deemed an unaccompanied minor. But no one with such knowledge was in the room.

On May 1, McAleenan emailed Hamilton, saying, “Looking at next week, likely,” for the Border Patrol to begin referring parents for prosecution. Three days later, McAleenan went to see Nielsen, his draft memorandum in hand for her to sign. A heated conversation ensued, according to Nielsen and several people who overheard it.

Nielsen told me that McAleenan made the usual arguments—you can’t tell Customs and Border Protection not to enforce the law; you can’t exempt parents from prosecution; the president wants this. “But I had been telling Kevin, ‘You cannot implement Zero Tolerance until I’m convinced that we have the resources.’ ” Nielsen said she thought that “in Kevin’s mind, I was holding up what they had been told to do, basically under law. And I’m sure Stephen was calling all of them five times a day, like, ‘Why aren’t you doing this?’ And the [Border Patrol and ICE] unions were freaking out because they wanted it to happen.”

Nielsen told me she wanted to be “the type of leader who deferred to the experts and the careers,” using shorthand to refer to those, like McAleenan and Homan, who had spent years working at their agencies and insisted that they had the resources necessary to implement the policy smoothly. She also could not afford to be seen as the sole moderate who was stalling for time. “DHS is a department of 250,000 people, so for me to pretend that I know better than everyone else, to me, seemed to be the opposite of the type of leader that I wanted to be,” Nielsen told me. “So, yeah, ultimately, I took Kevin at his word,” she said, adding that McAleenan demanded, “Why don’t you believe me and why don’t you believe the careers? They know what they’re doing!” (McAleenan denied ever pressuring Nielsen on his own behalf. He said he did convey directives that he was receiving from the White House and others.)

The argument would have continued but, Nielsen told me, she had to leave for another meeting. “I was like, ‘Okay, I believe you.’ ” She signed Zero Tolerance into being. “Frankly,” she told me, “I wish I hadn’t.”

On the afternoon of May 7, standing at the border in San Diego, overlooking the Pacific, Jeff Sessions held a press conference. With Tom Homan standing at his side, he announced that Zero Tolerance was going into effect as a national policy. Kirstjen Nielsen and other DHS staff say they weren’t informed about the press conference until a few hours beforehand, when a Justice Department spokesperson shared a draft of Sessions’s remarks. When they read it, Nielsen’s staff asked for the removal of one line, hoping that they could ask Border Patrol to hold off on applying the policy to families until they could prepare: “If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law.” Sessions’s staff declined; that’s our “money line,” they said, according to Border Wars, a book by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear.

John Kelly told me that during the televised press conference, Nielsen burst into his office in the West Wing, incensed. She was worried that a sudden and dramatic increase in prosecutions was going to cause chaos at the border. “Nielsen was saying, ‘We’re not ready to do this. We don’t have any facilities. We don’t have any training.’ ”

She was right, Kelly told me. “It was a disaster as predicted.”

After months of unheeded warnings and unread reports, the mass separation of families was about to begin. Though many have argued that the policy was born out of malice, those who watched it unfold up close say they saw something subtler but no less insidious among Homan and McAleenan and others who pushed the policy forward.

“They were trying to do their jobs,” Elizabeth Neumann, Nielsen’s deputy chief of staff, told me. “And they were absolutely flummoxed about how to stem the tide” of migrants flowing across the border. “And I think they lacked a really important filter to say ‘There is a line that we can’t cross.’ ”

She paused, then put this another way: “If the president suggested, ‘We should have moats with alligators in them, and maybe shoot people from the border, and that would be a deterrent,’ I think most every Border Patrol agent would be like, ‘Hey, that’s a red line we will never cross.’ We all know the bright-red lines.

“They just were up against this wall, and they couldn’t see the red line anymore.”

Implementation

(May–June 2018)

The implementation of Zero Tolerance was a disaster. For 48 days, catastrophes cascaded. After two and a half weeks, the Border Patrol leadership finally told agents to write down which children belonged to which parents. Internal emails show that when a magistrate judge in South Texas demanded that the Border Patrol there provide the court with weekly lists of separated children and their locations, threatening to hold the agency in contempt for failing to do so, agents panicked at their inability to fulfill such a basic request. “I might be spending some time in the slammer,” one supervisor wrote to a colleague, who replied, “I ain’t going to jail!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Some of those dealing with the fallout of Zero Tolerance—the bureaucrats, judges, social workers, U.S. attorneys, and law-enforcement officials—registered warnings or complaints with their supervisors. They received different versions of the same response: Push harder.

After Jeff Sessions’s announcement, the five U.S. attorneys stationed on the southwestern border requested a meeting with Gene Hamilton. Four days later, on May 11, as the attorneys sat on the line waiting for a conference call to begin, they received an email informing them that Hamilton would no longer be able to attend. The attorneys decided to talk among themselves, while a liaison from the Justice Department listened in and took notes. Afterward, the liaison wrote a summary of the call that concluded, “BIG CONCERN: What is happening with these children when they are being separated from the parent? It appears that once DHS turns the child over to HHS, DHS is out of the picture and cannot give information. What are the safeguards to the children?”

His attention apparently piqued, Sessions agreed to speak with the attorneys by phone later that day. His responses seemed out of touch with reality. He had promised to assign 35 additional attorneys to southwestern border districts to help with the implementation, but they wouldn’t be able to start those jobs for months. Several of the attorneys’ notes about the call record that Sessions articulated a central goal: “We need to take away children.”

Soon after, the U.S. attorneys were assured that parents and children would be swiftly reunified after prosecution. With that, they forged ahead.

Internal emails show that some assistant U.S. attorneys who resisted prosecuting parents under Zero Tolerance faced reassignment—and the parents whose cases they declined were separated from their children anyway. In early May, for example, DHS officials heard that attorneys in Yuma, Arizona, were declining to prosecute Zero Tolerance cases except in those instances where children had crossed the border with both parents, so that at least one parent could remain with them. As Border Patrol officials scrambled to confirm that this “problem” was not occurring elsewhere, one warned that “there will be repercussions” for prosecutors who turned down cases. Another added that “the AG’s office”—presumably a reference to Hamilton—had assured them that any attorneys refusing to break up family units “will find themselves working in another district, away from the Southwest Border.”

Hamilton made several attempts in early May, after Zero Tolerance began, to convene meetings between the Departments of Health and Human Services, Justice, and Homeland Security, in hopes of getting all three agencies, with their tens of thousands of employees, on the same page—but it was far too late. His emails betray such naivete about the system that it’s unclear if they were sincere or feigned. For example, in one email, he proposed that perhaps the U.S. Marshals could use abandoned jails to house separated parents—an idea that went nowhere because it would have taken millions of dollars and months of contract negotiations to bring such facilities up to federal code. At the same time, Hamilton was bragging internally about how much prosecutions had increased, writing to a colleague on May 21 that, although 2,700 monthly prosecutions had been typical in the months before Zero Tolerance, “we’re now on track to do at least that many each week.”

The brutality of Zero Tolerance was immediately evident. The father of a 3-year-old “lost his s—,” one Border Patrol agent told The Washington Post. “They had to use physical force to take the child out of his hands.” The man was so upset that he was taken to a local jail; he “yelled and kicked at the windows on the ride,” the agent said. The next morning, the father was found dead in his cell; he’d strangled himself with his own clothing.

The influx of anguished parents into government detention centers across the country turned the facilities into pressure cookers, where detainees and correctional workers alike were on edge. Even during the busiest season at the border, an individual U.S. Marshals facility would typically deal with only a few dozen daily intakes. Now the facilities were suddenly being asked to find housing for hundreds of new detainees every day.

Marshal supervisors ordered that temporary, stackable overflow beds be crammed into dorms so that the separated parents had a place to sleep. “Our manpower has been completely depleted,” a Marshal in the Southern District of California wrote in an email to staff in mid-May. “We are in ‘crisis mode,’ ‘critical mass’ ‘DEFCON 1’ or however you want to phrase it.”

On top of this, the Marshals were fielding urgent calls from shelter staff working under the Office of Refugee Resettlement who were improvising any method they could to track down the parents of separated children, to satisfy requirements that children in federal custody be given the chance to speak with their family members or sponsors twice a week. According to the DOJ’s inspector general, some of the Marshals had never heard of ORR and had to research it on the internet. Many Marshals declined to make parents available for the calls, because the Marshals were too busy or said they were not required to do so.

Rich Hunter, the high-ranking Marshals official in Texas who had anticipated such chaos, traveled from his office in Houston to the federal court in McAllen to try to troubleshoot problems. He arrived to find the street outside the courthouse lined with charter buses that had been procured at the last minute to transport the surge of separated parents to court. Because the court didn’t have enough cellblocks, parents had to sit for hours inside the parked buses until it was their turn to be called before the judge. The courtroom itself resembled a packed concert venue; the court reporter “was crammed in the corner,” Hunter told me. “The prosecutors are standing up over by the jury box that had additional defendants in it. It was just not a picture of a federal courtroom that I had ever seen before.”

As a 30-year veteran of the agency, Hunter said his first concern was safety. But he also found the scene emotionally disturbing. “I remember their faces,” Hunter said. “You deal with this issue long enough, you realize that the overwhelming majority of people are not cartel members … You would hear them asking their defense attorneys, asking anybody, for information [about their kids]. As a dad, as a person, it would take a toll on you, because you can imagine what that was like.”

He recalled parents struggling to use the court’s interpretation headphones. “A lot of them had not seen technology like that before ever in their life, so they’re put on wrong,” he said. “And then the look on their faces of What am I going through? ”

Neris González, a Salvadoran consular employee charged with protecting the rights of migrants from her country in U.S. custody, was stationed at a CBP processing center in McAllen when she read about Zero Tolerance. “In my little mind,” she told me, “I thought they were going to separate the families” by putting parents in one cell and children in another. “I never thought they would actually take away the children.”

But when she walked into the processing center for the first time after Zero Tolerance was implemented, she saw a sea of children and parents, screaming, reaching for each other, and fighting the Border Patrol agents who were pulling them apart. Children were clinging to whatever part of their parents they could hold on to—arms, shirts, pant legs. “Finally the agent would pull hard and take away the child,” she said. “It was horrible. These weren’t some little animals that they were wrestling over; they were human children.”

Other than Wesley Farris, the Border Patrol officer who spoke to Frontline, González appears to be the only official to have gone on the record to describe the separations themselves. (I asked members of the Biden administration to provide Border Patrol officials who’d participated in Zero Tolerance for an interview. I was told that no one would agree to speak with me.) González said the facility was effectively locked down during Zero Tolerance; almost no one outside Border Patrol and ICE was allowed in, whereas in the past, journalists, representatives from faith-based organizations, and human-rights lawyers had sometimes been given access. “It wasn’t right,” she said. “They didn’t want anyone to expose what they were doing.”

González asked a Border Patrol agent what was going on. “He said that ICE and BP were under orders from Trump, and he said to separate the kids from their parents—as in, completely separate.” Desperate scenes played out everywhere. Border Patrol agents who were yanking children away asked González to help them prevent fights. In several instances, she placed herself between parents and agents, trying to calm the families down. González said that at the height of Zero Tolerance, about 300 children were separated each day at her facility and crammed into caged enclosures. She spent most of her time inside the enclosures, helping children call their relatives. Sometimes the younger children didn’t seem to fully understand what was going on.

González says the sound in the facility was chilling—the children’s cries formed an ear-piercing, whistling wind. The sound worsened when it came time for her to leave at the end of the day. “They grabbed me, squeezed me, hugged me so that I couldn’t leave.”

For her, the scene triggered flashbacks to the war in El Salvador, where thousands of children were disappeared and the sound of their wailing mothers was hard to escape.

While zero tolerance was in effect, Kirstjen Nielsen defended it before Congress and in the media using the same clinical language that had been deployed to convince her that the policy was reasonable. She and her team argued that some of the separated families were actually part of trafficking schemes in which children were either kidnapped or paired with random adults in order to give both parties free passage into the United States. (Several Trump-administration officials stipulated that they would talk to me for this article only if I agreed to mention “false families” in my story. Instances of such false families do exist, but subsequent investigations into family separation have not yielded many examples. In the federal class-action lawsuit over family separation, the government indicated that it suspected only a small number of false families existed, and Michelle Brané, who is heading up the Biden administration’s Family Reunification Task Force, recently told me the group had not found a single false-family trafficking case.)

Another argument Nielsen made is still popular today among veterans of the Trump administration: that separating migrant children from their parents for the purposes of prosecution was no different from what happens in American criminal proceedings every day. “If an American parent is pulled over for a DUI and their child is in the back seat,” this argument goes, “the child doesn’t go to jail with them.”

But as U.S. attorneys—who are arguably the highest authorities on this subject—came to understand what was happening to families after separated parents left the courtroom, they wholly disagreed with this assessment. American parents who are arrested in the United States typically have access to a system for getting their children back when they are released from custody. According to a source, John Bash, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in El Paso, recently testified in federal court that he was horrified to discover in June 2018 that in the few days it took his office to finish prosecuting parents, their children were already being shipped as far away as New York, with no system in place for reuniting them. “It was like, ‘You’re telling me the kid is nowhere to be found and they’re in some other state?!’ ” Bash reportedly said.

Bash and other U.S. attorneys were flabbergasted by the ineptitude of those who had created the policy. “I remember thinking, Why doesn’t someone just have an Excel file? ” Bash reportedly said. “I mean, it’s a large population in human cost and human terms, but it’s not a large population in terms of data management. We’re talking about a few thousand families. You can have all that on one spreadsheet with the names of the people, where the kid’s going. It was just insane. I remember being told that there was going to be a phone number parents could call and know where their kids were. And I told a public defender that and she was like, ‘This phone number doesn’t work, one. And two, most parents don’t have access to phones where they’re being held, or they have to pay for the use of the pay phone. So that doesn’t work.’ ”

Bash asked the Justice Department to launch an investigation into why parents and children were not being reunited expeditiously, still not fully understanding his agency’s role in the scheme. He created a list of questions that he wanted answered, which were shared with Gene Hamilton, Rod Rosenstein, and others at DOJ: “What technology could be used to ensure that parents don’t lose track of children?”; “Is it true that they are often pulled apart physically?”; “Why doesn’t HHS return the child to the parent as soon as the parent is out of the criminal-justice system, on the view that at that point the child is no longer an ‘unaccompanied minor’?” Rosenstein responded that the U.S. attorneys should try to find out what was going on themselves. The attorneys sent the questions to their Border Patrol counterparts, but their inquiries were ignored. “DHS just sort of shut down their communication channels to us,” Ryan Patrick, the U.S. attorney in South Texas, told me. “Emails would go either unanswered, calls would go unreturned, or ‘We’re not answering that question right now.’ ”

Recently disclosed internal emails from that time help explain what Bash, Patrick, and the other U.S. attorneys couldn’t figure out—why the plan for reunifying families was faulty to the point of negligence. Inside DHS, officials were working to prevent reunifications from happening.

Within days of the start of Zero Tolerance, Matt Albence, one of Tom Homan’s deputies at ICE, expressed concern that if the parents’ prosecutions happened too swiftly, their children would still be waiting to be picked up by HHS in Border Patrol stations, making family reunification possible. He saw this as a bad thing. When Albence received reports that reunifications had occurred in several Border Patrol sectors, he immediately sought to block the practice from continuing, contacting at least one sector directly while also asking his superiors—Tom Homan, Ron Vitiello, and Kevin McAleenan—for help. “We can’t have this,” he wrote to colleagues, underscoring in a second note that reunification “obviously undermines the entire effort” behind Zero Tolerance and would make DHS “look completely ridiculous.” Albence and others proposed “solutions” such as placing parents whose prosecutions were especially speedy into ICE custody or in “an alternate temporary holding facility” other than the Border Patrol station where their children were being held. This appears to have happened in some cases.

Albence also suggested that the Border Patrol deliver separated children to HHS “at an accelerated pace,” instead of waiting for federal contractors to pick them up, to minimize the chance that they would be returned to their parents. “Confirm that the expectation is that we are NOT to reunite the families and release” them, Albence wrote. (Albence declined to comment for this article.)

DHS headquarters sent out an email on May 25 saying that—when it was possible—the agency had no choice but to reunify children with parents whose criminal sentences were complete. The responses made clear that this was new information and not part of the original plan. Mere prosecution was “not exactly a consequence we had in mind,” wrote Sandi Goldhamer, a longtime agent and the partner of Carla Provost, the head of the Border Patrol at the time.

Still unaware that DHS officials were working to keep parents and children apart, both Bash and Patrick started to devise strategies wherein parents could be prosecuted on misdemeanor charges, satisfying their orders from Sessions, but still get their children back quickly: Patrick developed a plan to transfer some detainees to less burdened courts in his district, farther away from the border, so that they could be prosecuted faster. Bash hashed out another plan to conduct prosecutions via video teleconference, so families would not have to be separated in the first place. Neither idea ever got off the ground.

Bash recently reviewed the exchanges between Albence and others at DHS, which were made public this past June as part of the court case for which Bash was deposed. He was outraged. In no place in the American criminal-justice system, he reportedly testified, would it be considered either ethically or legally permissible to keep children from their parents for punitive purposes after their legal process is completed. “We wouldn’t do that to a murderer,” much less a parent facing misdemeanor charges as a result of their attempt to claim asylum, Bash reportedly said.

In federal court cases, several parents whose children were taken away allege being taunted by agents who said “Happy Mother’s Day!” And parents say they were told that their children would be put up for adoption or that they would never see them again. Others recount being threatened or ignored when they asked where their children were. Perhaps to avoid physical altercations, some agents began deceiving families in order to lure them apart, or pulling children out of holding cells while they and their parents were asleep. Bash reported to DOJ headquarters that two plaintiffs in his district said they had been told their children were being taken to have baths and then never saw them again.

HHS child-care facilities evolved rapidly to meet the new demands of their work. Bethany Christian Services, which had previously cared mostly for children 12 and older, had to open a makeshift preschool to accommodate the influx of separated children who were not yet potty-trained and who needed to take naps. Bethany’s teachers stopped trying to give traditional lessons, resorting instead to playing soothing movies throughout the day, in hopes of preventing a domino effect where one child’s emotional outburst could quickly lead to an entire wailing classroom.

“What it demonstrated was that we do not, in fact, want your tired and poor and huddled masses,” Hannah Orozco, a supervisor at Bethany, told me. “We want to deter you from coming here, and we were the face to the children of that message.”

When the entire HHS shelter system reached capacity, Bethany resisted pleas to expand its program, which consists mostly of foster homes and a few small shelters housing only up to 36 kids at a time, to ensure that each child still received individualized care. But other companies eagerly accepted multimillion-dollar government contracts, housing children in huge facilities such as a former Walmart, which was at one point used to detain more than 1,000 children.

Large-scale institutions had long since been eliminated from the domestic child-welfare system because they were found to be traumatizing and unsafe. Indeed, many such facilities for immigrant children have faced significant allegations of physical and sexual abuse, and some have bypassed federal background-check requirements to weed out predators. But they are where most separated children ended up, in part because the lack of advance planning left no other option.

Some of the social workers under contract with HHS wrestled with the ethical dilemma presented by Zero Tolerance, unsure if they were helping separated children by continuing to go to work each day or if they were enabling the system that had taken them away from their parents in the first place. In mid-June, Antar Davidson quit his job at a large shelter in Arizona, calling himself a “conscientious objector” to Zero Tolerance. Children at the shelter had been “running up and down the halls, screaming, crying for their mom, throwing chairs,” he told MSNBC, which led to a “harder, more authoritarian approach by the staff in attempting to deal with it.”

The public did not know what to make of HHS’s role in the situation either. Reporters and protesters showed up outside HHS child-care facilities, whose addresses are typically tightly guarded because of the vulnerability of their clients. Staff put Halloween masks on the children or shielded their faces when they were outside to protect them from being photographed. A Bethany caseworker in Michigan was spit on at a gas station and accused of kidnapping.

Even high-ranking Trump-administration officials were deeply confused. For weeks, the White House communications team asked the Justice Department to put forward lawyers who could explain the policy to the media, but no one at DOJ headquarters wanted to do it. May Davis, then the deputy White House policy coordinator, tried to explain the situation to a group of senior staff, including Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary, who was being questioned by reporters about the policy. But Davis inadvertently added confusion by suggesting that parents and children were being swiftly reunited. “I did a few diagrams of what I thought was happening,” Davis told me. “Of course, what I thought was happening was ‘separate for two to three days while they go get time served from a judge and then come back.’ ”

At one point, Claire Grady, Nielsen’s deputy, emailed Rod Rosenstein at the Justice Department to ask for help: HHS had run out of space, so more than 100 young children had been stuck for several days in Border Patrol holding cells. Rosenstein, who had previously admonished John Bash’s office for declining to prosecute parents of very young children (a charge Rosenstein disputed to the DOJ inspector general, though it was explicitly documented), responded by asking if the 72-hour time limit on when children must be transferred over to HHS for their safety could simply be changed. Grady and Gene Hamilton had to explain to Rosenstein that the limit was nonnegotiable; it had long been enshrined in law. The email chain eventually made it to Jeff Sessions, who replied unhelpfully: “If things are not moving at any DOJ agency don’t hesitate to report it to me, and Rod or I may need to call them. We are in post 9/11 mode. All is asap.”

June 2018: A person in Tornillo, Texas, protests against the Trump administration’s Zero Tolerance policy, which separated families attempting to cross the border into the U.S. without authorization. (Mike Blake / Reuters / Alamy)

Meanwhile, the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was being overrun with pleas for help from separated parents looking for their children. The requests tended to be fielded by entry-level contract employees. Each time an employee started processing a new complaint, a mug shot of the child taken by the Border Patrol appeared on their computer screen. In some photos, a very young child appeared unaware of what was about to happen—smiling as if on school-picture day. Photographs of older children, who seemed to have a better understanding of what was going on, showed some in tears or still screaming. Young staffers in the office started breaking down at their desks.

Government records indicate that, just like with Operation Streamline, Zero Tolerance began preventing Border Patrol agents and federal prosecutors from focusing on higher-stakes work. The Border Patrol “is missing actual worthy felony defendants, including sex offenders,” the DOJ liaison for the U.S. attorneys wrote in an email to colleagues in Washington.

Ron Vitiello told me the main goal at CBP during Zero Tolerance was to encourage agents, whose morale was eroding. “This was supposed to be short-term pain for long-term gain,” Vitiello said. “I was trying to communicate with the workforce, telling them, ‘Hopefully we’ll see a dip in the numbers. This is going to work.’ ”

But as individual parts of the immigration enforcement system each wrestled with their own logistical crises, a gruesome larger picture began to come into view. The policy was so broken—perhaps intentionally—that it could not be fixed.

Vitiello and others at CBP and DHS headquarters said they were not aware of the wrenching separations being reported by the media. “I would feel bad if someone went to the shower and their kid was gone when they got back. I’m a human being,” Vitiello told me. He and others said they did recall the mood beginning to sour when it seemed as if the department had “lost the narrative” on Zero Tolerance in the press. McAleenan has since said that he felt the policy needed to end because CBP was losing the public’s trust—though he and others have also expressed a belief that journalists exaggerated their reporting on separations to make them seem more egregious than they were.

Some at DHS, however, did believe the well-documented reports that they were reading in the press—many of which involved leaks by government workers. Elizabeth Neumann, Nielsen’s deputy chief of staff, recalls a career civil servant walking into her office around this time and saying, “I can’t believe they’re doing it. This is evil.”

On June 18, the fog of denial abruptly dissipated when ProPublica published leaked audio of separated children crying for their parents inside a government facility. It called into question the official assurances that separations were happening smoothly and humanely. More than that, it made clear that the targets of the Zero Tolerance policy were not criminals, but children.

Throughout the seven-minute recording, a little boy speaking through a low, wobbly sob repeats “Papá, papá,” over and over. “I want to go with my aunt,” one little girl tells agents. Over their cries, a detention official can be heard joking with the children. “Tenemos una orquesta,” he said. “We have an orchestra—what we’re missing is a conductor.”

By that point, the U.S. government had separated from their parents more than 4,000 children under Zero Tolerance and the preceding local initiatives.

The audio clip was picked up by news outlets around the world. Comments posted on the YouTube version of the ProPublica audio show the news of family separation finally penetrating the public’s consciousness.

As I listened to this I cried till my stomach hurt so much.

My heart breaks hearing these innocent children crying. I hope that they will be reunited soon. God help us.

Never have I ever been more ashamed with America.

Facing an overwhelming outcry, even the staunchest Republican allies of Trump’s immigration agenda began condemning Zero Tolerance, some of them sincere and others motivated by politics. “All of us who are seeing images of these children being pulled away from moms and dads in tears are horrified,” Senator Ted Cruz told reporters. “We should keep children with their parents. Kids need their moms. They need their dads.”

One high-level HHS official told me it took weeks for her to accept what she was reading in the news, including that immigration officers were pressuring parents to agree to be deported without their children. “It was something so horrible that it wouldn’t occur to any normal person that this was happening,” the official said.

When denial was no longer viable, the administration wasted no time looking for someone to scapegoat.

“It was very apparent that they wanted a fall guy,” Lauren Tomlinson, the senior DHS communications aide, told me. When ProPublica published the recording, Kirstjen Nielsen was in Louisiana for a speech. At that point, she had already declined several requests from Sarah Huckabee Sanders to address the press from the White House podium.

While still on the plane back to Washington, Nielsen was summoned to the White House by Sanders, who told her when she arrived that she was the administration’s best person to address the policy, and that Jeff Sessions’s attempts to do so had only made things worse. (Days earlier, the attorney general had invoked scripture to justify the separation of families.) Nielsen and her inner circle huddled in the West Wing with John Kelly, who strongly urged her against doing the press conference. “I said, ‘Look, whoever goes out there is going to own this,’ ” Kelly told me. Nielsen told me she felt she had no choice. Her agents were being attacked, and it was her job to defend them.

Nielsen sat down in the makeup chair off the White House pressroom, while an aide, Jonathan Hoffman, peppered her with mock questions. Minutes later, she walked to the podium. Kevin McAleenan, who had urged Nielsen to approve the policy and was officially responsible for the actions of the Border Patrol, stood off to the side, outside of most of the news cameras’ frames, silent and unnoticed.

At DHS headquarters, staff huddled around televisions. “I think in that moment it became very clear to everyone just how bad everything was,” a senior DHS official told me. “For some people, that was their first time really understanding how much of a crisis this was.”

At the podium, Nielsen was defensive, causing reporters to bear down. She tried to distinguish between separating families and prosecuting parents—ignoring the fact that in practice this had amounted to the same thing. She emphasized that the parents being separated were committing the crime of crossing the border illegally, even if to exercise their legal right to claim asylum. She did not acknowledge that DHS had been limiting access to official ports of entry through a process called “metering,” effectively blocking people from requesting asylum without breaking the law to do it. Nor did she acknowledge that substantial numbers of families that had been able to cross at official ports of entry, or who had crossed elsewhere but were not being prosecuted, had also been separated. And she repeatedly blamed Congress for Zero Tolerance, suggesting that she’d had no choice but to enforce the statutes that made unauthorized border crossing a crime, which was a lie—outside Operation Streamline, few people were prosecuted in the decades prior to Donald Trump taking office.

To viewers watching the press conference, for whom the pleading cries of separated children were still fresh in mind, Nielsen’s focus on technical details seemed astonishingly tone-deaf.

Cindy Madrid located her then-6-year-old daughter, Ximena, only after recognizing her voice in audio released by ProPublica of separated children crying in a government facility. (Christopher Lee for The Atlantic)

Nielsen told me that at the time of the press conference, she was unfamiliar with news reports indicating that babies had been taken from their parents, or that family members were getting lost in the maze of federal detention, or that parents had been deported without their children, which happened more than 1,000 times, according to federal records. This is almost impossible to believe given her reputation as someone who was obsessively well prepared and consumed with following media coverage of her department’s operations.

“The last thing I would ever support or defend is some sort of tragic scene where someone is grabbing a baby out of someone’s arms,” Nielsen told me. “That’s just so the opposite of every bone, every cell in my body.”

After the press conference, Nielsen made her way out of the White House. As she left, people patted her on the shoulder as if they were touching a casket at a funeral one last time.

Reunification

Across the federal government, futile attempts at damage control began the next morning. It was “a minute-to-minute disaster,” a Justice Department official told me, recalling a meeting that day. “We were taking on water from all sides.” DOJ’s congressional-affairs team reported being inundated with official requests for information from Capitol Hill, while Rod Rosenstein finally conceded that he did not see any way of solving Zero Tolerance’s logistical problems. In the meeting, Sarah Isgur, the chief spokesperson for DOJ, said that the narrative around the policy had become so bad, there was no way to recover from it. As district-level reports—initially tightly controlled—circulated more widely at headquarters, it became clear that “there were some unfair stories out there,” the official told me, “but even the fairest ones were bad. And with some of the ones that the reporter had gotten wrong, the facts were actually worse than the reporter realized.”

Congressional Republicans began asking not only for an end to family separations, but for a bill outlawing them in the future. Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, told John Kelly at a breakfast meeting that if Congress didn’t outlaw family separations, “we will lose the House [in the 2018 midterms]. It will kill the Republican Party.” Kelly recounted the meeting in a discussion with Stephen Miller and some DHS officials, according to the contemporaneous notes of a Nielsen staffer who was present. Miller argued that the program should continue.

The White House scrambled to issue an executive order—one that is among the most confusing and nonsensical of all those produced by the Trump administration. It called for the Justice Department to continue exercising “zero tolerance” toward illegal border crossings—but at the same time for the Department of Homeland Security to maintain the family unity of those who were prosecuted. This was executive order as oxymoron: Zero Tolerance had meant separating families.

“It didn’t make a damn bit of sense,” May Davis recalled.

Nevertheless, the next day, June 20, Trump signed it. “He just kind of caved,” one Hawk told me. The administration indicated that families that crossed the border would be detained together in DHS’s family-detention centers for the duration of their criminal and immigration cases. This also made no sense. For one thing, DHS had about 3,000 family-detention beds. Based on the number of people crossing the border, those beds would have filled in less than two weeks. For another, asylum cases take more than a year to complete, on average, and a long-standing federal consent decree held that families could be detained for a maximum of only 20 days, because of the harm that long-term detention does to children.

[Read: Immigration-law changes will expand family separation]

During a conference call that same day, Gene Hamilton told reporters that the administration planned to challenge the consent decree, and that if the judge did not agree to lift it, family separations would begin again. “It’s on Judge [Dolly] Gee,” he said, referring to the Central District of California judge who would rule on their challenge. “Are we going to be able to detain alien families together or are we not?” The consent decree, Hamilton said, “put this executive branch into an untenable position”—as if the 20-day limit had not already been in place for several years and as if it were the judge, not the Trump administration, that had changed things with Zero Tolerance.

By late June, new separations had stopped. But it was still not at all clear what would happen to the estimated 3,000 separated children who remained in government custody, not to mention those who had been released to a sponsor in the United States but still had not been reunited with their parents. Soon after the executive order came down, an HHS spokesperson told reporters that the separated families would not immediately be reunited, because their parents were being detained on criminal or immigration charges. A second HHS spokesperson from the same agency followed up later in the day to say that the first one had misspoken, explaining that “it is still very early, and we are awaiting further guidance on the matter,” but that “reunification is always the ultimate goal.”

Only at the height of Zero Tolerance did Alex Azar, who was the secretary of Health and Human Services and therefore the overseer of the system tasked with sheltering the separated children, begin to understand his agency’s role in what was happening, according to his staff. (Azar declined to comment for this story.) A former corporate lawyer and pharmaceutical executive, Azar was appointed after the administration’s first HHS secretary, Tom Price, was ousted in scandal. He was given a mission of overhauling federal regulations on prescription-drug pricing, and he had pursued his target with exacting focus. Azar was so obsessed with efficiency that HHS employees were not allowed to contact him directly, lest he be distracted; his email address was a tightly kept secret. Azar’s chief of staff and deputy chief of staff fielded all internal inquiries to his office; anything that was not of utmost importance to Azar, they delegated. This included all matters related to immigration.

Azar didn’t know or care much about immigration policy when he joined the administration. He didn’t view this as a problem, because it seemed to him to be a fraction of HHS’s work. The entire immigration portfolio was given to Azar’s deputy secretary, Eric Hargan. Colleagues say that Hargan was not taken seriously—that he was frequently out of the office, appeared less than fully engaged in meetings, and lacked mastery of the policy details for his areas of responsibility, including immigration. Hargan declined to comment, so I was not able to confirm whether he had any knowledge of Zero Tolerance prior to it being announced, but Azar and others close to him insisted repeatedly that they had been wholly blindsided. Although Nielsen and others at DHS said that Azar was warned that the policy was coming, they conceded that perhaps no one “shook him by the shoulders” to explain exactly what it meant. Those close to Azar say that if he had been involved in any discussion of an innocuous-sounding prosecution policy, it would have flown over his head. He would have had no idea that prosecution would entail taking the parents’ children away, much less making them his responsibility as part of the larger pool of unaccompanied minors in the U.S. whom HHS was tasked with caring for.

Lucinda and her son Gabriel, photographed in July. They were separated for almost three months when he was 5, after they came to the U.S. from Honduras. (Juan Diego Reyes for The Atlantic; U.S. Government)

Once he fully understood Zero Tolerance, some of his employees told me, Azar was furious. But at no time, it appears, did he or other Health and Human Services officials argue against separating children before the policy was implemented nationwide. Yes, HHS officials had been cut out of the conversation by the Hawks in the White House—but they hadn’t noticed, they freely admit, because they hadn’t been paying attention. This is especially noteworthy in Azar’s case. He had a close relationship with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, which Azar leveraged to keep Miller from ever contacting him directly. If Azar had been attuned to what Zero Tolerance would mean, he may have been able to head it off or reshape it.

News coverage now made his agency’s connection to the crisis undeniable. Azar’s office heard from Rachel Maddow’s producers that her MSNBC show was getting ready to report that during Zero Tolerance—while his agency was erecting a tent city in the Texas desert to house the overflow of separated children in its custody—Azar had attended his Dartmouth College reunion. Azar demanded that Scott Lloyd, at the Office of Refugee Resettlement, immediately locate the parents of the separated children whom HHS was sheltering. When Lloyd went to Azar’s office the next morning to say that the parents were in ICE custody, Azar started yelling: He wanted precise locations for all of the parents. He didn’t yet understand that such information did not exist.

Casting Lloyd aside as useless, Azar deputized Bob Kadlec, the agency’s assistant secretary of preparedness and response, to take over the effort to put parents and children back in touch with each other. Kadlec, a physician, had spent two decades in Air Force Special Operations and the CIA, serving five deployments, before moving over to HHS. Though he had done stints advising Republicans in Congress and the George W. Bush White House, he identifies as an independent.

Recognizing immediately that he knew next to nothing about immigration law or the shelter system that HHS oversaw, he did something that those in charge of Zero Tolerance had yet to do: He turned to the bureaucracy for help. He asked his staff to identify experts in the agency who could brief him. Soon after that, Jonathan White was in his office. (White had eventually become so infuriated with Scott Lloyd that he’d left ORR and moved to a different department in HHS. In addition to rebuffing White’s pleas for an intervention on family separation, Lloyd had also been trying to stop unaccompanied girls in ORR care from getting abortions, using a spreadsheet with data including their last menstrual cycle. “We were in a human-rights free fall,” White recalled.) After a half-hour conversation, Kadlec announced that White would take charge of the entire operation.

For White, the appointment felt like an opportunity to redeem himself from his failure to stop family separations from happening. A week later, Lloyd still had not satisfied another one of Azar’s requests—to produce a list of potentially separated children. Azar told his staff to brew coffee and order pizzas; no one was going home. About a dozen members of Azar’s inner circle sat down in the secretary’s command center in front of computers, while Jallyn Sualog, a longtime civil servant at HHS who had been working with White to oppose separating families, taught them how to use an online portal to review every available detail about every child in their care.

At the time, Health and Human Services was housing roughly 12,000 children, the majority of whom had come to the United States alone—the population the HHS shelter system was created to serve. They would have to sift through those records in order to figure out which children—nearly a quarter of the total—had arrived at the border with a parent and then been separated.

Photos taken at the ORR shelters, similar to the mug shots that had brought employees in the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to tears at their desks, now filled the computer screens of Kadlec and his colleagues. When I met with Kadlec recently, he teared up when he told me that the pictures he saw that night still haunt him. “The first one was a little girl kind of smiling. Another was a little boy crying. Another was a teenage girl who looked fearful,” he said. “You could just see that what was happening was devastating to these kids … Some of the children were infants. Some were 1 and 2 years old, 5 years old, 10 years old.”

He recalled the “stupefying silence” that came over the room where he and the rest of the task force were working. “People afterwards had a hard time. I had to put some on extended leaves of absence because of emotional trauma.”

That night was the first time officials running HHS had to confront the faces of separated children—something many of those responsible for the policy have never had to do.

Federal employees took mug shots of children who were separated from their families. These photos are reprinted with permission from the children’s parents and legal representatives. (U.S. Federal Government)

Internal emails reveal that officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which was assuming custody of separated parents after the completion of their criminal proceedings, were still determined to block the HHS task force from reuniting any families unless it was for the purposes of deportation. “They will want to know what can be done to facilitate immediate reunification,” Matt Albence, who was soon to become the deputy director of ICE, told colleagues in an email. “I told them that wasn’t going to happen unless we are directed by the Dept to do so.”

Sensing that reunification was nowhere in sight, the ACLU’s Lee Gelernt asked the judge in his case against the government to intervene. Most of the separated children, except for those who had been released to other relatives in the United States, were still in HHS custody. For the most part, separated parents who had not yet been deported were either serving time for their illegal-entry convictions in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons or being detained by ICE. Many parents still didn’t know where their children were, and vice versa. (One woman, Cindy Madrid, only located her 6-year-old daughter, Ximena, after recognizing Ximena’s voice in the audio released by ProPublica, which was played during a news broadcast shown in the South Texas detention center where Madrid was being detained.)

On June 26, Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California responded to Gelernt’s request, ordering that the government return children younger than 5 to their parents within two weeks, and that the rest of the separated children be reunited with their families within 30 days. Alex Azar’s general counsel warned him that he could be held in contempt of court if the government did not successfully comply, which theoretically meant that Azar could be put in jail.

Kadlec and White, who were leading the HHS task force, sought out a few select representatives of ICE and CBP to help with their efforts. “We had to pick those people carefully so that they would be willing to share,” Kadlec told me, anticipating that not everyone at the law-enforcement agencies would try to be helpful.

“The ICE leadership didn’t want us to succeed,” White said. “They wanted to sabotage the reunification effort.” According to White, Tom Homan’s initial position as the head of ICE was that families should be reunified only “at the flight line in Phoenix”—meaning he didn’t want to return any children to their parents unless their immediate deportation was guaranteed. But there was no way to adjudicate everyone’s asylum claims (many of which were eventually successful) before Judge Sabraw’s deadline, so White requested that four DHS processing facilities be designated to serve as reunification sites. Even then, White says, ICE leaders started coming up with excuses for why they needed more time. Emails show that some children were told that they were going to be reunited with their parents and then were driven or flown to reunification sites hours away, only to learn upon arrival that ICE still wanted to interview their parents before they could be released, or that their parents were not even there yet. (Homan denies trying to delay family reunifications.)

“They were trying to run out the clock,” White said. He addressed HHS staff: “If we miss the judge’s deadline, there is nothing that we can use to hold the administration’s feet to the fire to make this happen. Do you understand? Then those kids will wait, their parents will be deported, and they will be separated potentially for the rest of their lives.”

White told his colleagues to marshal vehicles and flights they needed to move thousands of children across the country in a matter of days. “Here’s what we are going to do: You push those kids, once they’re green-lighted, to ICE’s door. You park them outside the door. We will move the kids to them and force them to do the reunifications, or the whole world will see kids surrounding them … Take snacks, take blankets. I am besieging ICE with children until they reunify them as they’re required to do.”

As officials in the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and Health and Human Services prepped for congressional hearings, the DHS communications aides Jonathan Hoffman and Katie Waldman showed up at HHS for a “murder board” session to prepare Jonathan White and others to answer questions. Quickly, arguments broke out, as White and Judy Stecker, a public-affairs official at HHS, felt that White was being pressured to suggest, inaccurately, on the witness stand that HHS had been given advance notice of Zero Tolerance. Stecker asked Brian Stimson, the lead HHS lawyer working on litigation over family separations, to provide backup. According to those present, Stimson told Hoffman to “fuck off” and called him a “moron.” (Hoffman disputes this.)

Afterward, Waldman pulled White aside and called him a bleeding-heart liberal. White unloaded on her, shaking and turning red. “It is difficult to maintain my emotional equilibrium where family separation is concerned,” he told me. “I do not accept that any immigration outcome, however important it might be to people, can be bought at the price” of separating families. “Like, you do understand these aren’t theoretical children? They’re all real children … They’re as real as my kids.”

The Aftermath

On August 1, a week after the court deadline, more than 500 separated children remained in federal custody; many others had been released to sponsors in the U.S. but still had not been reunited with the parent with whom they’d crossed the border. The government still had made no effort to contact parents who had been deported without their children. Judge Sabraw called the government’s progress “just unacceptable,” adding that “for every parent who is not located there will be a permanently orphaned child. And that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration.”

Additional separated children were later added to Lee Gelernt’s class-action lawsuit; as of now, the total number of known separations between January 2017 and June 2018 is more than 4,000. After entering the White House, President Joe Biden signed an executive order forming the Family Reunification Task Force, headed by Michelle Brané, to continue tracking down and reuniting the 1,500 families that remained separated when his administration took office. At least 360 parents have been reunited with their children. Those who had been deported after they were separated were allowed to return to the United States and given a three-year temporary-parole status. But approximately 700 families still have not been officially reunited, according to the task force’s most recent estimate. Some families are presumed to have found each other independently without reporting it, fearing any further interactions with the U.S. government.

Though prominent child-welfare organizations have labeled the family separations carried out by the Trump administration “child abuse” and “torture,” Gelernt avoids such language, because he believes it risks causing people to tune out even more. But he struggles with the reality that so many people seem to have moved on. “The average American parent, when they leave their child the first time for one night with a babysitter, is worried every minute of it, or when they drop their kid off for the first time in preschool and worry what the child is going through or the first time a teacher treats them unfairly,” he said. “Do they really not think these families suffer the same way they would from losing their child?”

His main goal at this point is to push for the separated families to receive permanent legal status in the United States—“something Congress could do tomorrow,” he said. Others are still advocating for the law that Paul Ryan requested, making it illegal to separate children from their parents for the purposes of deterrence. Both efforts have stalled.

The lasting effect of family separation is undeniable. Cheryl Aguilar, a therapist in Washington, D.C., who has treated more than 40 formerly separated families, said the children are still experiencing regressive behaviors such as bed-wetting and pronounced immaturity, as well as nightmares, flashbacks, and severe withdrawal and detachment from loved ones. Healing “takes a very long time when that kind of trauma takes place at such an important developmental stage,” she told me. “It impacted the wiring of their brain so that they have been primed to expect scary experiences like that in the future. They are hyperaware and hypervigilant of dangers—some of which are real and some perceived.” Aguilar hosts a support group for separated parents, who also struggle with severe depression and anxiety; some feel rejected by their children, many of whom believe their parents abandoned them or gave them up willingly. “We’re trying to give children and families basic tools to reconnect and start processing,” she said.

Various studies have looked at the effect of separation on migrant families. In April, Physicians for Human Rights published a report based on clinical evaluations of 13 separated parents. All of them had some form of mental illness linked to the separation; 11 had PTSD. Anne Elizabeth Sidamon-Eristoff, now a medical student at Yale, who led another study, pointed out that in animal research used to assess risk for mental illness, separation of mice from their mothers is used as a kind of gold-standard strategy for modeling stress in humans. “My first thought was, That’s what our government is doing to children,” she told me.

“These studies reaffirm what science has been saying all along” about what the impact of a program like Zero Tolerance would be, Sidamon-Eristoff told me. “And it’s honestly quite frustrating to me that we even have to collect this data to try to prove a point that we’ve always known: Family separation is bad for children.”

The frontline workers who were pulled into Zero Tolerance against their will have also struggled. Last summer, I visited Nora Núñez, who no longer works as a public defender. She invited me into her living room, where the lights were off. She was in low spirits. A Washington Post reporter had recently contacted her for a story about a separated mother whom Núñez had represented in court. He’d shown Núñez a picture of the mother and daughter being reunified four years after they were separated. The girl’s arms were limp at her sides while her mother embraced her through tears. “You could tell that little girl was traumatized. Her mother was hugging her, and you could see her face and her eyes looked kind of vacant,” she told me, her mouth quivering. “You didn’t see any normal emotion of happiness of being reunited.”

Núñez said she felt sick as she recalled rushing parents through their prosecutions because she thought that it would get them back to their children more quickly—not realizing that the government had other plans.

“I’m not sure if I can do this much more right now,” she said after a while, eventually asking me to leave.

Mirian and her son, originally from Honduras, were separated in U.S. custody in 2018, when he was 18 months old, not long after presenting themselves for asylum. In a sworn declaration in federal court, Mirian said that because her son was so young, Border Patrol agents made her carry him to a car herself, strap him into a car seat, and watch as they closed the door and drove off. (Christopher Lee for The Atlantic)

As the Trump administration sought to defuse the anger over Zero Tolerance, White House officials proposed blaming separated families for what had happened to them. A damage-control working group developed fact sheets suggesting, without evidence, that most of the separated children were trafficking victims, according to two people who were present. At one meeting, one of these officials told me, “they were like, ‘Why don’t we just show these women throwing their children over the wall, and then people will think, How could they do this? ’ ”

Throughout the remainder of his presidency, Trump pushed to relaunch family separations. “The conversation never died,” Kirstjen Nielsen told me, recalling a series of discussions that took place at the White House and on Marine One. “I started saying, ‘Sir, we really can’t reinstate it. Nothing has changed. We still do not have the resources. It will result the same way. The system didn’t get fixed.’ ” She says she threatened to resign, and appealed for support to the first lady, Melania Trump, who would place a discouraging hand on her husband’s shoulder when Trump ranted about “turning it back on,” generally while watching Fox News.

Nielsen had been persuaded to sign off on Zero Tolerance by people who either minimized its implications or cloaked its goals, but the president himself didn’t bother speaking in euphemism. Trump would “literally say ‘family separation,’ ” a senior DHS official recalled. “Stephen Miller was always very cautious and would frame it as ‘reinstituting Zero Tolerance.’ But Trump himself just blurted it out.” (Trump could not be reached for comment.)

The official continued, “The level of visceral description that the president gave would freak Nielsen out because she was like, ‘I’m out here trying to explain that this isn’t what the administration intended to do,’ and the president’s talking like it totally was.”

Nielsen said she tried framing separation as something that would harm the president’s reelection prospects, but the strategy didn’t work, because Miller would counter that he believed the opposite was true. She told Trump he would have to write yet another executive order to reinstate Zero Tolerance, knowing he would never agree to backtracking publicly, because it would make him look weak. A few times, Nielsen called Alex Azar to ask him to back her up. Azar also indicated that he would resign if the policy were to be reinstated.

As time went on, Trump became further incensed about the number of people crossing the border, proposing more and more outlandish ideas to stop it from happening, many of them preserved in the senior DHS official’s notes: The president once “ordered Kelly to tell Nielsen to, ‘Round them all up and push them back into Mexico. Who cares about the law,’ ” one entry says. “Silence followed.”

Nielsen’s relationship with the president never recovered; she was asked to resign in the spring of 2019. Trump elevated Kevin McAleenan to replace her temporarily. During his tenure, DHS and its subagencies pursued other controversial tactics targeting families, such as conducting raids in homes with children and detaining them along with their parents for the purposes of deporting them, something ICE had historically tried hard to avoid. Trump refused to officially nominate him for the position. He eventually resigned as well.

“To me, the person who did not get enough scrutiny or enough blame or enough attention was Kevin McAleenan,” a lawyer working for one of the congressional committees that investigated family separations told me. This idea was repeated by many of those closest to Zero Tolerance, who criticized McAleenan for insisting—publicly and privately—that he was merely a bystander. In an interview with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd at the height of the policy, when asked who had ordered Zero Tolerance, McAleenan invoked Sessions’s Zero Tolerance memo, not mentioning that his own memo had been the catalyst that activated the policy, or that he had repeatedly urged Nielsen to sign off on it. “Kevin knew everything that was going on, he pushed it, he supported it, and he was the key to implementing it,” the lawyer said. After Zero Tolerance ended, McAleenan said publicly that he felt it was a mistake. “The policy was wrong, period, from the outset,” he told me. “It should never have been undertaken by a law-enforcement department, even while facing the stark challenges we faced at the border.”

Ron Vitiello, who became the acting director of ICE in June 2018, also owned up to the policy’s shortcomings, becoming emotional in some of our interviews. “We could have done the logistics better,” Vitiello told me. “It wasn’t messaged right. We rushed into this failure, basically … It’s definitely one you wish you could get back, but it wasn’t cruel and heartless to be cruel and heartless. We surmised it was a way to get us out from under this crush at the border, but we sort of lost it.”

Nielsen said she decided to speak to me for this story “because the border and immigration situation in this country is heartbreaking and is only getting worse.” She said that it is up to Congress to reform our immigration laws in a way that allows people who need to come to the United States to do so legally, and for the laws to be fully enforced in a way that is humane. With regard to Zero Tolerance, Nielsen said she wouldn’t apologize for enforcing the policy. She echoed an argument I heard frequently from people I interviewed for this story: that they, or their agency, had been unfairly blamed. “HHS had the children, DOJ had the parent, we had neither,” Nielsen told me.

But she wished she hadn’t approved the policy, because of its deep flaws. “I made the decision based on what turned out to be faulty information,” she told me. She insisted that she had prevented the worst from happening, because she never signed off on the administrative-separation proposal, which could have led to thousands more children being taken from their parents.

People who know Miller say he believes that Zero Tolerance saved lives, and that immigration enforcement was Trump’s most popular accomplishment among his base. Miller has told them that the administration laid the groundwork necessary for a future president to implement harsh enforcement even more quickly and with greater reach than under Trump.

In my interviews, the Hawks argued that Zero Tolerance had been effective—or that it would have been, if only it had been left in place a little longer—suggesting that if Trump or someone who shares his views on immigration were to be elected in 2024, family separations would almost definitely recommence.

Recently, I spoke with Alejandro Mayorkas, President Biden’s Homeland Security secretary, who has been dealing with yet another influx of border crossers, most of whom are now coming from places outside Latin America. Biden campaigned on a promise to tackle the root causes of migration to the United States from Central America—poverty and violence—but little progress has been made on that front. In June, 53 migrants died trying to sneak into the interior of the country in the back of a tractor trailer, a deadlier incident than the one Tom Homan witnessed in 2003.

Despite the fact that such incidents tend to result from harsh enforcement at the border, Mayorkas has faced criticism from Republicans for being too soft on immigration, in particular for the Biden administration’s move to scale back Title 42, a Trump-era policy linked to the coronavirus pandemic that effectively sealed the border. In response, Mayorkas has started reaching for the same solutions that led to Zero Tolerance—using the Border Patrol to ramp up prosecutions and generate other forms of “consequence delivery,” though he says those tools should be deployed only “in concert with ample humanitarian protections for people seeking asylum.” Congressional action on border issues continues to stall, leaving immigration policy squarely in the hands of the executive branch.

[Caitlin Dickerson: Democrats’ free pass on immigration is over]

Mayorkas said he hoped the media would help hold those responsible for family separation to account. While some deterrent strategies “arguably fall within the parameters of our value system,” Mayorkas said, family separation was “way outside the bounds of what we as a civilized and humane country would ever countenance.”

When I asked Mayorkas about any official government accountability for those who were responsible for separating families, he said that was outside his purview at DHS and was up to the Justice Department. But DOJ has been defending Zero Tolerance—and the individuals responsible for it—in court, insisting in a recent hearing that a family-separation policy “never really existed. What existed was the Zero Tolerance policy which started in April of 2018 … We have testimony from the CBP and ICE witnesses and from Hamilton, who was at DHS at the time, that these separation policies, as plaintiffs put it, never existed, and they were never enacted.”

But the judge was unconvinced. “This is a continuing argument that the government’s been making,” she said, pointing out that the plaintiffs in that particular case, migrants who were all separated from their children, were never even prosecuted. (The Justice Department declined to comment for this story but has said previously that it is devoted to “bringing justice to victims of this abhorrent policy.”)

A comprehensive accounting of what happened during Zero Tolerance would require the government to look not only ahead toward reunifying families, but backwards as well—to be fully transparent about the past. This seems unlikely to happen. “DHS was lying to us and not giving us documents,” the lawyer who investigated Zero Tolerance for a congressional committee while Trump was still in office told me. “They very much withheld stuff from us, and I would catch them red-handed and flag it for them, and they’re like, ‘Oh well, we’ll go back and look,’ and it was a constant BS battle.”

Many of those who were involved in the development of Zero Tolerance are still working at DHS or its subagencies. But Mayorkas said it would be too hard for him to determine “what they knew, what they didn’t know, what they understood, what they didn’t understand.” That lack of accountability for those who participated in separating families has some in the government worried that the practice could restart under another administration. “There is no cautionary tale to prevent this from happening again,” Jonathan White said. Without that, he told me, “I fear that it will.”

If anyone is likely to lead another push for the American government to separate families, it’s Stephen Miller. For a year and a half, I tried to reach him so that I could ask him directly, among other things, why he had lobbied so forcefully for this to occur in the first place, and whether he would do so again in the future. A close friend of Miller and his wife explained that ever since the couple became parents, they had been consumed by child care and were hard to reach.

As my deadline approached, Miller repeatedly ducked or delayed speaking with me. Once, when I got Miller on the phone, he quickly told me that he had to go, and hung up. He soon sent a follow-up text to explain why he had been so abrupt. “With the extended family.” he said. “And our little one.”

The running count of separated children throughout this article comes from government data provided to the ACLU as part of the federal Ms. L litigation.

Additional image credits: Albence: Scott Heins / Getty; Azar: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Bash: William Luther / San Antonio Express-News / AP; Duke: U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Durbin: John Davenport / San Antonio Express-News / AP; Hamilton: U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Hoffman: Yasin Ozturk / Anadolu Agency / Getty; Homan: U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Kadlec: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Kelly: U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Lloyd: Administration for Children and Families; McAleenan: James Tourtellotte / U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Miller: Chip Somodevilla / Getty; Nielsen: U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Patrick: David J. Phillip / AP; Provost: U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Rosenstein: Matthew T. Nichols / U.S. Department of Justice; Sessions: U.S. Department of Justice; Vitiello: U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Waldman: Office of the Vice President; White: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg / Getty; Wolf: Glenn Fawcett / U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Development and production by Frankie Dintino, Aithne Feay, Elizabeth Hart, Gerald Rich, and Yuri Victor

This article appears in the September 2022 print edition with the headline “‘We Need to Take Away Children.’”

Una catástrofe estadounidense

2022-08-07T08:00:00-04:00

Fotoilustraciones por Oliver Munday

Read this article in English.
Este artículo se tradujo del inglés. Lea la versión original.

Como terapeuta de niños que están siendo procesados por el sistema de inmigración estadounidense, Cynthia Quintana tiene una rutina que repite cada vez que conoce a un nuevo paciente en su oficina de Grand Rapids, Michigan: Llama a los padres o a los familiares más cercanos para informarles que el niño está a salvo y bien atendido, y que está disponible para proporcionar información las 24 horas del día.

Este proceso suele llevarse a cabo a las pocas horas de la llegada de los niños. La mayoría son adolescentes que han memorizado o anotado los números de teléfono de sus familiares en cuadernos que tenían al cruzar la frontera. En el momento de esa primera llamada, sus familias suelen estar preocupadas, esperando ansiosamente noticias después de haber enviado, en un acto de desesperación, a sus hijos solos a otro país en busca de seguridad y de la esperanza de un futuro.

Pero, en el verano de 2017, Quintana se encontró con un caso curioso. Un niño guatemalteco de 3 años, con una sonrisa llena de dientes y el pelo negro cortado con forma de tazón, se sentó en su escritorio. Era demasiado pequeño para haber hecho el viaje por su cuenta. No tenía ningún número de teléfono, y cuando le preguntó a dónde se dirigía o con quién había estado, el niño la miró sin comprender. Quintana buscó más información en su expediente, pero no encontró nada. Le pidió ayuda a un agente del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE), que volvió varios días después con algo inusual: información que indicaba que el padre del niño estaba bajo custodia federal.

En la siguiente sesión, el niño se retorcía en su silla mientras Quintana llamaba al centro de detención y conseguía que su padre se pusiera al teléfono. Al principio, el padre estaba callado, me dijo. “Finalmente le dijimos: ‘Su hijo está aquí. Puede oírlo. Puede hablar ahora’. Y se notaba que se le quebraba la voz: no podía”.

El niño llamó a su padre a los gritos. De repente, ambos gritaban y sollozaban tan fuerte que varios colegas de Quintana corrieron a su oficina.

Finalmente, el hombre se calmó lo suficiente como para dirigirse directamente a Quintana. “Lo siento mucho, ¿quién es usted? ¿Dónde está mi hijo? Vinieron a mitad de la noche y se lo llevaron”, dijo. “¿Qué le digo a su madre?”.

Ese mismo verano, Quintana también fue asignada para trabajar con una niña hondureña de 3 años que no proporcionó ninguna indicación de cómo había llegado a Estados Unidos o a dónde se suponía que iba. Durante las primeras sesiones, la niña se negó a hablar. Los músculos de su cara se encontraban distendidos y sin expresión. Quintana supuso que la niña padecía un grave trastorno de desapego, a menudo resultado de un trauma repentino y reciente.

En toda su organización (Bethany Christian Services, una de las varias empresas contratadas por el gobierno estadounidense para atender a los niños inmigrantes recién llegados) los colegas de Quintana estaban teniendo experiencias similares. Jennifer Leon, profesora en Bethany, estaba un día en la oficina cuando la empresa privada que transporta a los niños desde la frontera entregó una niña “como si fuera un paquete de Amazon”. La bebé llevaba un pañal sucio; su cara estaba llena de mucosidad. “Le entregaron la bebé a la gestora del caso con una bolsa de pañales, firmamos y listo”, recuerda Leon. (Leon llevó a la bebé al hospital para que la evaluaran).

Mateo Salazar, terapeuta en Bethany, fue a su oficina en medio de la noche para conocer a una niña hondureña de 5 años recién llegada. Al principio, la niña se mostró estoica, pero cuando los empleados de la empresa de transporte comenzaron a marcharse, la niña corrió tras ellos, golpeando las puertas de cristal y llorando mientras se tiraba al suelo. Salazar se sentó con ella durante dos horas hasta que se calmó lo suficiente como para explicarle que su madre le había hecho prometer, mientras los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza los separaban, que se quedaría con los adultos que la acogieran pasara lo que pasara, porque ellos la mantendrían a salvo.

Durante más de un año, Quintana y sus colegas se encontraron repetidamente con casos como estos. Para localizar a los padres de los niños que tenían a cargo, recorrían las prisiones y los centros de detención de inmigrantes de Estados Unidos, utilizando pistas de las redes sociales o sugerencias de amigos dentro del gobierno. Se esforzaban por explicarles a los padres por qué se habían llevado a sus hijos o cómo recuperarlos. Los terapeutas, profesores y asistentes sociales intentaban mantener la compostura en el trabajo, pero luego se derrumbaban en sus carros y delante de sus familias. Muchos se plantearon dejar su trabajo. Aunque eran expertos en la atención a niños gravemente traumatizados, este era un reto que no sabían cómo enfrentar.

“Empecé a cuestionarme a mí misma”, dijo Quintana. “¿Estoy haciendo lo correcto al atender a estos niños, o estoy contribuyendo al daño que se está haciendo?”.

“Simplemente no podía creerlo”, dijo sobre el momento en que comprendió que no eran casos puntuales. “Algo que no era humano”.

Durante el año y medio en el que el gobierno de Estados Unidos separó a miles de niños de sus padres, las explicaciones de la administración de Trump sobre lo que estaba sucediendo fueron profundamente confusas, y en muchas ocasiones (estaba claro incluso en ese entonces) claramente falsas. Soy una de los muchos reporteros que cubrieron esta historia en tiempo real. A pesar de la gran cantidad de trabajo que produjimos para llenar el vacío de información, sabíamos que la verdad completa sobre cómo nuestro gobierno había llegado a este punto todavía se nos escapaba.

Los funcionarios de la administración de Trump insistieron durante todo un año en que las separaciones familiares no estaban ocurriendo. Finalmente, en la primavera de 2018, anunciaron la implementación de una política de separación con gran despliegue; como si una no hubiera estado ya en marcha durante meses. Luego declararon que separar a las familias no era el objetivo de la política, sino un resultado desafortunado de perseguir a los padres que cruzaron la frontera ilegalmente con sus hijos. Sin embargo, una montaña de pruebas demuestra que esto es explícitamente falso: Separar a los niños no era solo un efecto secundario, sino la intención. En lugar de trabajar para reunificar a las familias después de procesar a los padres, los funcionarios trabajaron para mantenerlas separadas durante más tiempo.

Durante el último año y medio, he realizado más de 150 entrevistas y he revisado miles de páginas de documentos internos del gobierno, algunos de los cuales me fueron entregados solo después de una demanda judicial de varios años. Estos documentos demuestran que, mientras los funcionarios desarrollaban la política que acabaría separando a miles de familias, minimizaron sus implicaciones para ocultar lo que estaban haciendo. Muchos de estos funcionarios insisten ahora en que no había forma de prever todo lo que iba a salir mal. Pero esto no es cierto. Todos los peores resultados de la política se anticiparon, y se ignoraron las repetidas advertencias internas y externas. De hecho, los registros demuestran que casi no hubo planificación logística antes de que se iniciara la política.

Se ha dicho de otros proyectos de la era de Trump que la incompetencia de la administración mitigó su malevolencia; aquí ocurrió lo contrario. Una flagrante falta de preparación supuso que los tribunales, los centros de detención y los refugios para niños se vieran peligrosamente abrumados; que los padres y los niños se perdieran entre sí, a veces a muchos estados de distancia; que cuatro años después, algunas familias siguieran separadas, y que incluso muchos de los que se han reunido hayan sufrido un daño irreparable.

Estas ilustraciones fueron creadas por The Atlantic usando citas directas de padres a quienes les arrebataron a sus hijos. Las entrevistas fueron conducidas por el Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (El Proyecto de Apoyo para Solicitantes de Asilo), una organización de defensa de los derechos que ha ayudado a familias separadas a interponer y entablar demandas contra el gobierno de los EE. UU. En una declaración, el departamento de Aduanas y Protección de Fronteras de los Estados Unidos dijo a The Atlantic, “Consideramos todas las denuncias con seriedad, proporcionamos múltiples vías para informar las denuncias de mala conducta e investigamos todas las quejas formales.” (Fotoilustraciones por Oliver Munday)

Es fácil culpar de las separaciones familiares a los funcionarios antiinmigración por los que es conocida la administración de Trump. Pero estas separaciones también fueron avaladas y permitidas por decenas de miembros de la administración media y alta del gobierno: secretarios del Gabinete, comisionados, jefes y adjuntos que, por diversas razones, no expresaron su preocupación incluso cuando deberían haber visto que se avecinaba una catástrofe; que confiaron en que “el sistema” impediría que ocurriera lo peor; que razonaron que no sería estratégico hablar en una administración en la que ser etiquetado como un RINO o un “squish” (nombres vulgares para aquellos considerados insuficientemente conservadores) podría acabar con su carrera; que asumieron que alguien más, en algún otro departamento, debía estar al tanto del problema; que estaban a tantas capas de abstracción de la realidad de los niños que gritaban y eran arrancados de los brazos de sus padres que podían esconderse de las consecuencias humanas de lo que estaban haciendo.

El Congreso también merece ser culpado, ya que durante décadas no logró llenar un vacío legislativo que los funcionarios antiinmigración se encargaron de explotar. Durante demasiado tiempo, se ha permitido que una fuerza policial fronteriza sobrecargada de trabajo y mal equipada determine la política social, económica y humanitaria crucial. No es de extrañar que esta fuerza policial haya recurrido a la herramienta más preparada a su disposición: el endurecimiento de los castigos.

Lo que sucedió en los meses que llevaron a la implementación de la Tolerancia Cero (la iniciativa de la administración de Trump que separó a miles de familias) debería ser estudiado por las futuras generaciones de psicólogos organizacionales y filósofos morales. Plantea cuestiones que tienen resonancia mucho más allá de esta única política: ¿Qué sucede cuando la ambición personal y el escrúpulo moral chocan en el anonimato gris de una burocracia? ¿Cuándo se convierten las racionalizaciones en negación o en un auténtico engaño? ¿Cuándo queda anulada la propia comprensión de la línea que separa lo correcto de lo incorrecto por la insistencia a gritos de un jefe?

Al informar sobre esta historia, hablé con decenas de funcionarios de la administración de Trump cuyo trabajo estaba relacionado de alguna manera con la política. Muy pocos estaban dispuestos a hablar en público, por temor a que afectara sus posibilidades de empleo. Varios de ellos me dijeron que estaban especialmente nerviosos porque tenían hijos en los que pensar y matrículas universitarias que pagar. Durante las entrevistas, me decían que me llamarían luego para poder ir corriendo a recoger a sus hijos de la escuela; los sentaban a hacer los deberes o con los juguetes para que pudiéramos hablar en privado en sus casas. “¿Puede esperar? Mi hija está a punto de subir a su vehículo para irse y necesito darle un beso de despedida”, dijo una funcionaria mientras describía una hoja de cálculo con cientos de quejas de padres que buscaban a sus hijos. Escuché cómo la madre y la hija se decían “te quiero” una y otra vez al menos cinco veces antes de que la funcionaria volviera y nuestra conversación continuara.

Recientemente, llamé a Nazario Jacinto-Carrillo, un agricultor de 36 años del altiplano occidental de Guatemala sobre el que escribí por primera vez en 2018. En aquel entonces, con su campo estéril y el precio de las cosechas estancado, su familia se había esforzado por sobrevivir con los $4 semanales que llevaba a casa durante la temporada de cosecha. La mayoría de los días, él y su esposa pasaban hambre; algunos días, sus dos hijos pequeños también. Eran indigentes y se sentían inseguros en su comunidad. Así que esa primavera, él y su hija de 5 años, Filomena, partieron hacia Estados Unidos. Un “coyote” los guió hasta la frontera americana, cerca de San Diego. Todo lo que tenían que hacer era cruzar a pie.

Las cosas no salieron como estaba previsto. Mientras seis agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza los rodeaban, Filomena se agarró a una de las piernas de Nazario, al igual que otra niña de su edad con la que viajaban. Las niñas gritaron cuando los agentes las separaron, y uno de ellos sujetó a Nazario por el cuello. Nazario acabó accediendo a ser deportado a Guatemala porque, según dijo, un agente federal le dijo que, si lo hacía, le devolverían a Filomena en dos semanas. Esta falsa promesa se les hizo a muchos padres separados, a los que la administración describió después como si ellos hubieran elegido despiadadamente dejar a sus hijos solos en Estados Unidos. “Nunca abandonaría a mi hija”, me dijo Nazario cuando hablamos por primera vez. Había pasado más de un mes desde la deportación de Nazario y Filomena seguía sin estar en casa.

La voz de Nazario se quebró mientras interrumpía mis preguntas con las suyas. ¿Cuándo volverá Filomena a Guatemala? ¿Cuántas semanas? ¿Cuántos días? ¿Cuándo va a devolver el gobierno de Estados Unidos a los niños que secuestró? ¿Qué quiere hacer con ellos? Son niños.

Hicieron falta casi tres meses, un equipo de abogados, la atención constante de los periodistas y una orden judicial federal para que Filomena se reuniera con su familia. Para entonces tenía 6 años; había celebrado un cumpleaños bajo custodia del gobierno estadounidense.

Cuando volví a llamar a Nazario hace poco, sus hijos seguían teniendo hambre y su familia seguía sintiéndose insegura. Le dije que, cuatro años después, algunos padres siguen sin recuperar a sus hijos. “Sinceramente, no sé qué decir”, dijo. Cuando le pregunté si Filomena, que ahora tiene 9 años, recordaba lo que había vivido en Estados Unidos, le pasó el teléfono para que pudiera responder ella misma. Ella soltó algunas palabras que no pude entender y luego se quedó callada y le devolvió el teléfono a su padre.

“Lo siento”, me dijo. “Está llorando”.

El amanecer de la Tolerancia Cero

Para entender cómo el gobierno estadounidense arrebató a los niños de sus padres sin ningún plan para devolverlos, hay que remontarse al 11 de septiembre. Tras el atentado más mortífero de la historia de Estados Unidos, la administración de Bush creó un nuevo departamento federal. Formado por 22 oficinas y agencias, el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS) se convirtió en la mayor agencia federal de seguridad del país. Sus cientos de miles de empleados se encargaron de investigar a los extranjeros que entraban en Estados Unidos, cualquiera de los que podría llevar a cabo el siguiente complot para acabar con vidas estadounidenses.

Entre las agencias integradas en el DHS se encontraba la Patrulla Fronteriza. La Patrulla Fronteriza, una fuerza policial federal creada en 1924, parecía algo sacado de una vieja película del Oeste. La agencia atrajo a miles de hombres y mujeres jóvenes que querían luchar contra el crimen y portar armas, y como durante décadas no se exigía un título de secundaria, atrajo a muchos que no habrían podido trabajar en su departamento de policía local. Por cada persona que la Patrulla Fronteriza atrapaba, persiguiéndola a pie, a caballo o en cuatriciclo, otras 100 parecían colarse. Incluso los propios agentes sabían que su trabajo era en su mayoría ineficaz.

Pero después del 11 de septiembre, la agencia asumió una misión de seguridad nacional, y la forma de ver a los que cruzan la frontera evolucionó. Aunque la postura denigrante hacia los inmigrantes no era nada nuevo (los agentes se referían a las personas que detenían como “cadáveres” y los clasificaban con términos como guats y hondus), de repente la dirección de la agencia empezó a describir a estos jornaleros como delincuentes empedernidos y graves amenazas para la patria. La Academia de la Patrulla Fronteriza pasó de ser un aula, con cursos sobre leyes de inmigración y español, a un campo de entrenamiento de estilo paramilitar.

La Patrulla Fronteriza ya no se contentaba con vigilar la frontera nacional centrándose en los delitos más prioritarios, sino que ahora pretendía asegurarla por completo. Un solo cruce ilegal de la frontera era demasiado. El nuevo objetivo era la tolerancia cero.

En 2005, durante el segundo mandato de George W. Bush, un emprendedor jefe de la Patrulla Fronteriza en Del Rio, Texas, llamado Randy Hill, tuvo una idea para eliminar definitivamente los cruces fronterizos no autorizados: Convertiría el proceso en algo tan desagradable que nadie querría intentarlo. Para ello, recurrió a una disposición legal añadida a la ley federal de inmigración en la década de 1950, que solo se había aplicado en contadas ocasiones; dicha disposición convertía cualquier cruce de frontera no autorizado en un delito menor, y cualquier reincidencia en un delito grave. Antes de 2005, los jueces y fiscales federales habían acordado tácitamente dejar en paz a los inmigrantes, excepto en los casos más destacados. Las personas que recogen cosechas para obtener un salario por debajo de la mesa no eran una preocupación principal para la mayoría de los estadounidenses; los fiscales estadounidenses, sobrecargados de trabajo y preocupados por los principales casos de contrabando de drogas y armas, consideraban el cruce de la frontera como una infracción menor que no merecía su tiempo. (No se pudo contactar con Hill para que aportara sus comentarios).

Pero el jefe de Del Rio convenció a sus homólogos de las fuerzas del orden locales para que participaran en un experimento en el que se procesaría a todo adulto que fuera sorprendido cruzando la frontera ilegalmente, sin importar el motivo. Esto sometería a los inmigrantes a un procedimiento formal de deportación y provocaría penas aún más duras si se los sorprendía intentando cruzar de nuevo en el futuro, finalizando prácticamente su posibilidad hacia la ciudadanía.

Esta iniciativa, denominada Operación Streamline, constituiría la base de una escuela de pensamiento que ha hecho de la “prevención por disuasión” una pieza central de la aplicación de la ley de inmigración de Estados Unidos en la actualidad. Los padres que viajaban con niños estaban generalmente exentos de ser perseguidos en el marco de la Operación Streamline, pero este enfoque para asegurar la frontera acabaría culminando en la separación de las familias.

El experimento comenzó de forma bastante prometedora. En cuatro años, las aprehensiones en la frontera de Del Rio se redujeron en un 75 %, y en Yuma, Arizona, en un 95 %. El cuartel general de la Patrulla Fronteriza quedó tan impresionado que decidió implantar el plan en todo el país. Pero la iniciativa puede haber tenido menos éxito de lo que sugieren esas cifras.

En las regiones que no adoptaron Streamline, los cruces fronterizos aumentaron, lo que indica que el programa estaba empujando a la gente a cruzar por otras zonas. “Lo llamo ‘exprimir el globo’” , me dijo Anthony Porvaznik, que fue jefe de la Patrulla Fronteriza en Yuma durante las administraciones de Obama y Trump. Si bien la primera mitad de la década de Streamline coincidió con una disminución general de los cruces a nivel nacional, la investigación académica indica que esto fue en gran parte atribuible a la economía. (La disminución de los nacimientos en México había dado lugar a un número mucho menor de adultos que necesitaban trabajo, mientras que la demanda de mano de obra en Estados Unidos se desplomó en 2008, durante la recesión). Los que sí parecían ser disuadidos por Streamline eran trabajadores migrantes que nunca habían estado en la cárcel, dijo Porvaznik. A los que cruzaban con drogas o armas la frontera no parecía importarles.

En muchos sentidos, la aplicación de Streamline fue un desastre. Los juzgados a lo largo de la frontera se vieron tan desbordados que tuvieron que cerrar al público. Los jueces empezaron a celebrar audiencias masivas, con grupos de hasta 100 acusados con grilletes siendo juzgados al mismo tiempo. Arizona declaró una emergencia judicial a principios de 2011, suspendiendo temporalmente el derecho a un juicio rápido para todos los acusados federales, incluidos los ciudadanos estadounidenses. Los agentes de la ley argumentaron que la avalancha de juicios por delitos menores exigida por Streamline les restaba recursos a los casos de delitos graves.

Sin embargo, los procesos penales contra los que cruzan la frontera son cada vez más populares desde el punto de vista político. Bajo las administraciones de Bush y Obama, los funcionarios del DHS, deseosos de demostrar que mantenían la seguridad de la nación, declararon ante el Congreso que la Operación Streamline era una “buena práctica” del sector. Los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza también adoptaron el modelo, sintiéndose por fin capacitados tras décadas de impotencia.

A mediados de la década de 2010, el aumento de la pobreza y la explosión de la violencia doméstica y de las bandas en Guatemala, Honduras y El Salvador estaban empujando a los niños y a las familias hacia la frontera en mayor número. (En la actualidad, el Departamento de Estado les desaconseja a los estadounidenses viajar a esos países, debido a los secuestros y asesinatos desenfrenados). Jonathan White, un antiguo trabajador social de los Salud y Servicios de Humanos (HHS), fue enviado a evaluar la situación. Vio a niños hacinados en diminutas celdas de hormigón de la Patrulla Fronteriza o durmiendo bajo los puentes mientras esperaban a ser procesados para entrar a Estados Unidos. En una de las instalaciones, “el cartel de los bomberos sobre la puerta decía ocupación máxima de 35 personas”, me dijo White. Más de 80 adolescentes se repartían agua en vasos de papel y se subían unos a otros para acceder a un único retrete. Vio a un bebé tumbado solo en una caja de cartón aplastada. “Estábamos horrorizados desde el punto de vista de la salud pública, de la salud infantil”.

En 2014, Jeh Johnson, secretario de Seguridad Nacional del presidente Barack Obama, llamó a John Kelly, un general del Cuerpo de Marines que se desempeñaba como el funcionario militar de más alto rango de Estados Unidos en América Central y del Sur, para pedirle que lo aconseje. “Le dije: ‘Ven aquí’”, recordó Kelly que le dijo a Johnson en ese momento. “Tienes que venir aquí y mirar hacia el norte y ver de qué se trata el otro lado del problema”.

Durante la visita de Johnson a la ciudad de Guatemala en julio de 2014, Kelly explicó que la migración masiva de niños y familias que buscan asilo en Estados Unidos no era una amenaza para la seguridad nacional, pero dijo que la aglomeración en la frontera seguiría aumentando a menos que los puestos de trabajo fueran más abundantes, y la violencia disminuyera, en toda América Central. Ninguna medida de “disuasión”, le dijo Kelly a Johnson, podría contrarrestar todos los factores que impulsan a los centroamericanos hacia Estados Unidos. Johnson dejó la ciudad de Guatemala con una mejor comprensión de la dinámica a la que se enfrentaba, pero sin ninguna solución para sus abrumados agentes o su jefe, el presidente Obama.

Así que Johnson convocó una reunión en Washington con sus principales funcionarios de la policía fronteriza para debatir ideas. Entre los presentes se encontraban Kevin McAleenan, que entonces era el comisionado adjunto de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza; Ron Vitiello, el jefe adjunto de la Patrulla Fronteriza; y Tom Homan, el director ejecutivo asociado de aplicación y expulsión del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas. Los tres serían promovidos posteriormente, y se convertirían en parte integral de la implementación de las separaciones familiares cuatro años más tarde.

De los presentes en la sala, Homan era el más estridente. Llevaba décadas trabajando en la aplicación de la ley de inmigración, comenzando a los 20 años como agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza. Homan dijo que quería aplicarles las lecciones percibidas de la Operación Streamline a las familias migrantes, enjuiciando a los padres que cruzaron la frontera ilegalmente con sus hijos. Aunque muchas de estas familias llegaron a Estados Unidos en busca de asilo, con este nuevo modelo serían tratadas como delincuentes. Homan explicó que los padres serían puestos bajo custodia penal federal, al igual que con la Operación Streamline, solo que esta vez el proceso desencadenaría una separación familiar automática.

Este es el primer caso que he descubierto de separación familiar que se propone como forma de disuadir la migración a Estados Unidos. Esto convierte a Tom Homan en el padre de la que podría ser la política más controvertida de la administración de Trump. “La mayoría de los padres no quieren que los separen”, me dijo Homan recientemente. “Te mentiría si no pensara que eso tendriá un impacto”.

Homan reconoció que mucha gente lo consideraría malvado por proponer la idea, pero dijo que su intención era ayudar a las familias, no perjudicarlas. Se explicó contando una experiencia que, según dijo, todavía lo abruma. Un día de la primavera de 2003, dijo, recibió una llamada de la sede del ICE pidiéndole que acudiera a la escena de un crimen cerca de Victoria, una ciudad del sureste de Texas. Voló a la frontera, donde más de 70 inmigrantes habían sido descubiertos metidos en la parte trasera de un camión sobrecalentado. Cuando las autoridades los encontraron, 17 de los pasajeros ya estaban muertos; dos más murieron poco después. Los cuerpos sin vida salían a borbotones del camión. La mayoría de los pasajeros se habían quitado la ropa interior para aliviar el calor.

Cuando Homan inspeccionó el remolque, vio a un niño que resultó tener 5 años (la misma edad que el hijo menor de Homan) tumbado en el regazo de su padre, ambos muertos. “Me arrodillé, puse mi mano sobre la cabeza del niño y recé, porque solo podía imaginar cómo debía ser su última hora de vida, lo asustado que debía estar. No podía respirar, en la oscuridad, suplicándole a su padre que lo ayudara. Su padre no podía ayudarlo. ¿En qué estaba pensando su padre? Él lo había puesto en esa posición, ¿no? Su padre probablemente estaba diciendo: ‘No puedo creer que haya hecho esto’”. Dijo que tuvo que asistir a terapia debido a esta experiencia. “Ese caso me convirtió en lo que soy hoy, porque se puede prevenir. Podemos evitarlo”.

Homan dijo que pensaba en familias como esta cuando le planteó al secretario Johnson la idea de perseguir a los padres y llevarse a sus hijos. Sí, las familias separadas sufrirían, reconoció, pero al menos “no están muertas”.

“El objetivo no era traumatizar”, añadió. “El objetivo era detener la locura, detener la muerte, detener la violación, detener la muerte de los niños, detener a los cárteles haciendo lo que estaban haciendo”.

Cuando la política oficial de Tolerancia Cero entró en vigor, en la primavera de 2018, la administración de Trump hizo un uso frecuente de esta defensa. La escuché una y otra vez mientras realizaba entrevistas para este reportaje: Se separó a las familias no para hacerles daño, sino para mantener a salvo a otros como ellos. Lo que nunca oí reconocer a nadie fue que los métodos de “disuasión”, como la separación de familias, han demostrado que aumentan la probabilidad de estos terribles resultados, porque una aplicación más dura de la ley induce a los niños y a las familias a intentar cruzar a escondidas la frontera utilizando métodos más peligrosos, como esconderse en la parte trasera de un tráiler.

Johnson acabó rechazando la propuesta de Homan. Aunque profesó su creencia en el valor de la disuasión, dijo que, como padre, no podía soportar la separación de los niños de sus padres.

“La separación de familias se planteó y se rechazó por dos razones”, me dijo Johnson recientemente. En primer lugar, “ya tenía en mi mente la vívida imagen visual de una madre aferrada a un niño en una estación de detención de la Patrulla Fronteriza, y no iba a pedirle a alguien de la Patrulla Fronteriza o del ICE que se llevara a ese niño”. En segundo lugar, “se habrían desbordado” los albergues gubernamentales para niños. “Así que era despiadado y poco práctico”.

El equipo C se reúne

(Noviembre de 2016–enero de 2017)

En la rama ejecutiva del gobierno estadounidense, las ideas políticas son tradicionalmente examinadas en primer lugar por expertos en la materia (personal de nivel inferior cuyos conocimientos son específicos y profundos). Las ideas que aprueban son elevadas a los gestores que están familiarizados con múltiples áreas de estudio y, por lo tanto, con las implicaciones más amplias de una posible política. Por último, las propuestas se entregan a los responsables políticos que se aseguran de que cumplen los objetivos de la administración. Solo las políticas que sobreviven a estos niveles de examen se les presentan a los directores, es decir, a los secretarios del Gabinete o a los jefes de las agencias, que deciden, sobre la base de exhaustivos informes, si las autorizan o no.

El sistema tiene múltiples propósitos: Evita que los altos cargos se enreden tanto en los detalles de una parte de su agenda que descuiden otra. Y, dado el escaso conocimiento de primera mano que tienen, se supone que evita que los que tienen autoridad tomen decisiones desinformadas. “Es un secreto muy mal guardado en Washington que los directores nunca tienen idea de lo que están hablando”, me dijo un funcionario de la Casa Blanca de Trump. Tengan eso en cuenta mientras avanzamos en esta línea de tiempo.

Cuando Donald Trump se preparó para cubrir los puestos políticos que se encuentran en la cima de la burocracia en enero de 2017, contaba con un pequeño banquillo del cual sacar provecho. Durante la campaña de Trump, muchos republicanos prominentes habían jurado públicamente no apoyarlo nunca. La lista se redujo aún más cuando Chris Christie, el jefe de la transición de Trump, fue despedido. Cuando Christie se fue, también lo hicieron muchos de los republicanos del grupo de poder que estaban alineados con él. Era el momento de incorporar al equipo C.

Los nombramientos políticos que llegaron para trabajar en cuestiones de inmigración en la nueva administración pueden clasificarse en dos grupos.

En el primer grupo estaban los republicanos del grupo de poder (me referiré a ellos como los Careerists [arribistas]), que no estaban obligados por el presidente sino por la llamada a servir a su país, así como por la ambición personal: Con tan pocos candidatos cualificados deseosos de trabajar para Trump, los que estaban dispuestos a hacerlo se instalaron unos cuantos peldaños más arriba en la burocracia de lo que probablemente habrían hecho en una administración tradicional. Al igual que otros republicanos moderados, seguían esperando que Trump fuera menos errático y extremo como presidente de lo que había sido como candidato. Y si no, se decían, la burocracia los salvaría: Las ideas más extravagantes de Trump nunca sobrevivirían a las capas de revisión de los expertos.

Algunos miembros de este grupo procedían de una comunidad muy unida de expertos en seguridad nacional que habían ocupado los peldaños más bajos de la dirección del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional cuando se creó. Ahora, a mitad de carrera y entrando en la madurez, habían permanecido en estrecho contacto; en los actos de los antiguos alumnos de Bush, normalmente se les podía encontrar reunidos en torno a cuestiones de ciberseguridad o antiterrorismo. No eran especialmente beligerantes en materia de inmigración según los estándares del GOP de Trump. Entre este grupo se encontraba Kirstjen Nielsen, directora de política de la Administración de Seguridad de Transporte en el momento de su fundación, que fue seleccionada para “acompañar” a John Kelly, el candidato del presidente a secretario del DHS, en su proceso de confirmación. Más tarde se convertiría en el rostro de las separaciones familiares.

Para el segundo grupo (me referiré a ellos como los Hawks [halcones]), Trump fue un vehículo para la implementación de ideas que habían estado perfeccionando durante años. Reforzó sus planes para reducir la inmigración después de ver lo populares que eran en los mítines de la campaña. El mérito de ese éxito recayó en Stephen Miller, el líder de los Hawks, que ya había alcanzado una pequeña infamia mientras trabajaba como director de comunicaciones del senador Jeff Sessions de Alabama. Firmó como redactor jefe de discursos y asesor principal del presidente. Sessions, que anteriormente había sido condenado al ostracismo por su propio partido por su postura casi fundamentalista sobre la inmigración, se convirtió en el primer fiscal general de Trump.

Menos conocido que Miller, tenemos a Gene Hamilton, un abogado que había trabajado para el ICE en Atlanta antes de ir al Capitolio como consejero general del entonces senador Sessions. Se convirtió en consejero principal del secretario Kelly. La reputación de Hamilton es compleja; entre sus colegas se destacaba por ser excepcionalmente amable y, de hecho, orientado a la familia, y con frecuencia les preguntaba a sus colegas por sus hijos y su vida personal. Pero creía que las leyes de inmigración debían aplicarse con un rigor draconiano. Aunque Atlanta tenía los tribunales de inmigración más severos del país, donde más del 90 % de los acusados inmigrantes perdían sus casos, él había dejado ese trabajo enfadado, según un antiguo colega, porque sentía que a demasiados inmigrantes indocumentados se les daba un “pase libre”. (Miller no quiso hacer comentarios para este artículo. Hamilton no respondió a las solicitudes de comentarios).

Para dotar de personal a su equipo en la Casa Blanca, Miller contrató a una serie de personas procedentes de puestos secundarios de antiinmigración del Washington oficial. Muchos habían ayudado personalmente a frustrar los esfuerzos de reforma bipartidista en el pasado. Ahora planeaban eludir el Congreso por completo, utilizando toda la autoridad presidencial posible para dar forma a las políticas de inmigración de la nación sin ninguna aportación de los legisladores.

Los Hawks sabían que sus planes iban a ser controvertidos, pero no les importaba. Los nuevos colegas eran vistos como liberales encubiertos hasta que se demostrara lo contrario. “Existe este culto al proceso”, me dijo John Zadrozny, que se unió al equipo de Miller como miembro del Consejo de Política Interior de la Casa Blanca. “Proceso, proceso, proceso. Proceso es el código para ‘Podemos frenar los rápidos impulsos de una administración política sin expertos’. Pues eso no es lo que se votó”.

“Nuestra postura fue: ‘Si no quieren tomar estas decisiones difíciles, váyanse’”, dijo Zadrozny. “‘Hay muchos de nosotros aquí que haremos estas cosas y dormiremos por la noche... Sabemos que recibiremos algunas flechas. No pasa nada. Para eso estamos aquí’”.

Propensos a la paranoia y a la insularidad, los Hawks firmaron acuerdos de confidencialidad y se reunieron durante la transición en sesiones secretas en el cuarto de guerra, sin que el personal del consejo general les dijera que sus ideas eran ilegales o los burócratas las consideraran irreales. Compusieron una serie de órdenes ejecutivas, muchas de las cuales parecían más bien comunicados de prensa, aunque Miller las utilizaría más tarde para obligar a los secretarios del Gabinete a cumplir sus deseos.

En cualquier otra administración presidencial, el desprecio de Miller por la cadena de mando habría sido motivo de despido. Pero poseía una especie de mística que lo aislaba de las consecuencias. Casi nadie, incluidos los secretarios del Gabinete, se atrevió a desafiarlo, incluso cuando los condujo a la distracción. (Al menos un secretario del Gabinete negoció una prohibición efectiva para no tener que tratar nunca directamente con Miller, y otro exigió que Miller no hablara nunca con sus subordinados sin permiso, una orden que Miller no acató).

Miller supo gestionar mejor que otros asesores su relación con el presidente. Evitó el protagonismo y nunca se opuso, como hicieron otros, a las ideas más irreflexivas del presidente. Pero cuando les pregunté a sus colegas por qué se le concedía tal protección, me recordaron que se trataba de una administración plagada de inseguridad y síndrome del impostor: El presidente y su familia no esperaban ganar las elecciones de 2016. Cuando lo hicieron, se formó una narrativa que daba crédito a Miller, y a sus discursos sobre inmigración. Los mensajes de Miller llegaron a considerarse cruciales para asegurar un segundo mandato.

En las reuniones sobre la política de inmigración durante la transición, Miller y Gene Hamilton demostraron lo poco que entendían sobre la aplicación de las leyes fronterizas. Según las personas que asistieron a las reuniones, propusieron ideas extravagantes, como el envío de tropas de la Guardia Nacional a la frontera para impedir que los inmigrantes pisaran suelo estadounidense, o la construcción de barreras a través de terrenos privados, incluso a través de vías fluviales en las que dichas estructuras no podrían resistir los patrones climáticos estacionales. “Hablaban como personas que nunca estuvieron en la frontera”, dijo un funcionario.

Pero en lugar de oponerse a las malas ideas en esas primeras reuniones, los Careerists se limitaron a poner los ojos en blanco y a compadecerse después. Les pregunté a varios de ellos por qué no habían explicado las razones obvias por las que no debían aplicarse esas políticas. Me dijeron que se trataba de un entorno de “hablar cuando se le habla”. Y precisamente porque las propuestas que se barajaban eran tan terriblemente malas, confiaban en que la burocracia las neutralizaría. Al final, estos funcionarios asumieron (incorrectamente) que el único daño que harían esas reuniones sería el tiempo que perdían.

Una idea que afloró en múltiples ocasiones a principios de 2017 fue la propuesta de Tom Homan, de la época de Obama, de perseguir a los padres que llegaran a la frontera con sus hijos y separarlos. John Kelly, que no ocultó su disgusto por los Hawks, me dijo que Stephen Miller le lanzó la idea directamente, con el apoyo de Hamilton. Kelly llegó a su puesto en desventaja, al igual que Kirstjen Nielsen, a quien había nombrado jefe de gabinete. Aunque entendían, a un alto nivel, los factores incitadores y disuasivos que influían en las tendencias de la inmigración, tenían poco conocimiento del código federal de inmigración real o de los mecanismos a través de los cuales se aplicaba. Esto hizo que Kelly dependiera del conocimiento del sistema de Hamilton, a pesar de su desprecio por la política de éste. “Había una dinámica inusual en la que Kelly se burlaba de Gene”, me dijo un alto funcionario del DHS sobre las reuniones matutinas del personal. “Decía: ‘Oh, Gene-O, ¿te ha llamado tu amigo Stephen últimamente?’ Esa era la forma en que Kelly decía: ‘Sé que tienes amigos en todos estos lugares y que hay una red de inmigración de derecha aquí, pero yo soy el jefe, así que asegúrate de que todo pase por mí’”.

Kelly me dijo que se oponía inmediatamente a la separación de familias, no solo por motivos morales, sino también por razones pragmáticas: Basándose en su propia experiencia en Centroamérica, no creía que fuera a funcionar. Kelly sabía que el argumento moral no convencería a Trump, así que se centró en los desafíos logísticos. Pidió una revisión superficial de la política, tras la cual llegó a la misma conclusión que Jeh Johnson: Aunque la idea era probablemente legal, era tremendamente impráctica: ejecutarla con éxito requeriría cientos de millones de dólares para construir nuevos centros de detención y meses para formar al personal tanto de Seguridad Nacional como de Salud y Servicios Humanos, este último encargado de atender a los niños separados. (En marzo de 2017, Kelly dijo a la CNN que la idea estaba en estudio, alimentando rumores y confusión que perdurarían durante el año siguiente).

Basándose en esta revisión, me dijo Kelly, decidió definitivamente no autorizar un programa de separación. Compartió su decisión públicamente, primero en una reunión con los demócratas del Senado el 29 de marzo de 2017, y posteriormente con la prensa.

Después de eso, Kelly me dijo que cada vez que se proponía la idea en una reunión del Gabinete o de otro tipo, se refería a los resultados de la revisión, como si leyera un guión: Separar a las familias era sencillamente imposible. Le dijo a Trump que el presidente tendría que pedirle al Congreso los fondos para ello, sabiendo que nunca aceptaría hacerlo, “porque eso lo vincula a la política, y pierde la negación”, dijo Kelly.

Pero la idea de separar a las familias seguía adelante de todos modos, por numerosas vías a la vez, incluidas algunas que estaban fuera de la vista de Kelly. El día de San Valentín de 2017, Kevin McAleenan, ahora jefe en funciones de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza, organizó una gran reunión con representantes de la CBP, el ICE, el HHS y un grupo de Hawks de la Casa Blanca.

Al otro lado de la mesa de los Hawks, tanto literal como figurativamente, estaba Jonathan White, el trabajador social. Antiguo académico, White se había convertido en comandante del Cuerpo Comisionado del Servicio de Salud Pública de Estados Unidos, y había ascendido rápidamente dentro del HHS: Semanas antes de que Trump fuera elegido presidente, White había sido designado para dirigir el programa que alberga a los niños inmigrantes bajo custodia del gobierno estadounidense, una división de la Oficina de Reasentamiento de Refugiados (ORR). Junto con la mayoría de los empleados de esa oficina, es un experto en traumas infantiles. Considera que los niños bajo el cuidado de la oficina son los más vulnerables del hemisferio occidental, no solo porque están solos en un país extranjero, sino porque “se salen de los gráficos en lo que respecta a las ACE”, o experiencias adversas de la infancia, como la exposición a la violencia, la inseguridad alimentaria y la sensación de que su vida está en riesgo. Incluso antes de que Trump asumiera el cargo, la ORR se había quedado a menudo fuera de las reuniones porque se la consideraba un impedimento para la implementación de las políticas de la frontera.

El secretario de Seguridad Nacional, John Kelly, y Kirstjen Nielsen, entonces jefa de personal de Kelly, se reúnen con Tom Homan, Gene Hamilton, Matt Albence y otros altos mandos del DHS en marzo de 2017. (Departamento de Seguridad Nacional de EE. UU.)

White dice que el ambiente era como un rally de ánimo, con dos diputados de Tom Homan, Matt Albence y Tim Robbins, anunciando sus planes para asegurar la frontera, que incluían la separación de las familias migrantes. (Robbins no respondió a las solicitudes de comentarios). Cuando se describió la iniciativa, dice White, se puso pálido y empezó a pensar en una estrategia para detenerla. Pidió un libro blanco en el que se articulase la idea, sabiendo que tener esa documentación le permitiría presionar contra la separación de familias directamente al secretario de Salud y Servicios Humanos, Tom Price, y compartirla con otras partes de la burocracia del HHS que podrían empezar a esbozar sus muchos defectos éticos y logísticos. (Los documentos muestran que White seguiría solicitándoles el libro blanco a los funcionarios de la CBP y el ICE, que prometieron que se realizaría, aunque nunca se materializó).

Mientras tanto, Kelly se enteró de que Miller se estaba contactando con varios funcionarios del DHS para impulsar la idea de separar a las familias, y se puso furioso. Kelly irrumpió en una de sus reuniones matutinas de personal y declaró que cualquiera que se pusiera en contacto con Miller tenía que informárselo directamente a Kelly, y que, en cualquier caso, el DHS no seguiría adelante con la idea, sin importar cuántas veces se planteara. Le dijo a Reince Priebus, el jefe de personal de Trump, que mantuviera a Miller alejado de sus subordinados en el DHS.

Cuando Kelly sustituyó a Priebus como jefe de gabinete de Trump, pensó que había cerrado definitivamente el debate sobre la separación de familias. Pero ya estaba en marcha una iniciativa local que pronto se utilizaría para justificar las separaciones a escala nacional.

El piloto

(Marzo–noviembre de 2017)

En la primavera de 2017, cuando los cruces ilegales de la frontera estaban sufriendo su típico repunte estacional, Jeff Self, el jefe de la Patrulla Fronteriza en El Paso, Texas, actuó siguiendo un mensaje general que él y otros jefes de sector habían recibido tras la elección de Trump: trabajar con sus homólogos locales del Departamento de Justicia (DOJ) para reprimir los cruces de la frontera al servicio de la agenda del nuevo presidente. Self decidió que la mejor manera de hacerlo sería que sus agentes empezaran a remitir a los padres que viajan con niños para que los procesen. Aunque probablemente no se diera cuenta en ese momento, Self estaba sentando las bases de una política nacional de separación de familias. Más tarde, los funcionarios federales llamarían a su iniciativa local “piloto” y la utilizarían como modelo para expandir la práctica a nivel nacional. (Self no quiso hacer comentarios para este artículo).

Un agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza que trabajaba bajo las órdenes de Self envió un correo electrónico a un fiscal adjunto del Distrito Oeste de Texas para informarle sobre la divergencia de la práctica anterior. Aunque está redactado de tal manera que sugiere un cambio administrativo insignificante, el correo electrónico estaba describiendo de hecho una reactivación de la idea que Tom Homan le había propuesto a Jeh Johnson en 2014: utilizar el enjuiciamiento y la separación de las familias como medio para disuadir a los posibles migrantes.

En ese momento, el Distrito Oeste de Texas estaba siendo dirigido por Richard Durbin, que mantenía caliente el puesto de fiscal de Estados Unidos hasta que se pudiera nominar y confirmar a un designado por Trump. Durbin, que llevaba décadas en la oficina, respondió al cambio de política con escepticismo. “La historia no lo juzgaría amablemente”, les escribió a sus colegas. Aunque Durbin estaba de acuerdo en que eximir a todos los padres del enjuiciamiento parecía poco inteligente, dijo que no tenía “ninguna confianza” en la capacidad de la Patrulla Fronteriza para determinar cuáles merecían ser enjuiciados. “No queremos que los niños pequeños sean separados de sus padres y colocados en algún servicio infantil burocrático o en una agencia de acogida en el limbo”.

Durbin finalmente consintió en procesar a algunos padres, pero quería centrarse en aquellos que también estaban siendo acusados de delitos mucho más graves. “Si la culpabilidad es muy baja y están con sus propios hijos no necesitamos procesarlos”, escribió en un correo electrónico. “Si son un sicario debemos procesar y averiguar cómo tratar humanamente a los niños”.

Pero las instrucciones enviadas a los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza, que obtuve a través de una solicitud de la Ley de Libertad de Información (FOIA), no contienen ninguna de las limitaciones que Durbin solicitó, sino que enfatizan que “se contactará con la oficina del Fiscal de los Estados Unidos para buscar el procesamiento de los adultos de cada unidad familiar arrestada”. El documento se dedica sobre todo a advertirles a los agentes de que no deben ponerse en contacto con los fiscales adjuntos sobre los casos a altas horas de la noche o durante los fines de semana. No contiene ninguna orientación sobre cómo separar a los padres y a los hijos o qué debe decirse a cada uno de ellos sobre lo que está ocurriendo.

Una persona familiarizada con el pensamiento de Durbin me dijo que se sintió indignado cuando descubrió que el cambio de política de la Patrulla Fronteriza no pretendía castigar a los criminales más duros que podrían haber estado utilizando a los niños para entrar en Estados Unidos, sino que era una estrategia para disuadir a las familias que buscan asilo. “Me engañaron”, dijo Durbin. “No les importaban nuestros procesos judiciales. Querían una razón para separar a los niños de sus padres”.

A Wesley Farris, agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza en El Paso, se le pidió que se encargara de algunos de los casos de separación. En uno de ellos, un niño de unos 2 años se aferró a él confundido, negándose a soltarlo. “El mundo estaba al revés para ese niño”, dijo Farris a Frontline de PBS. “Ese hecho me abrumó”. Farris le dijo después a su supervisor que no le asignara más casos de separación. “Fue lo más horrible que he hecho en mi vida”, recordó. “No puedes evitar ver a tus propios hijos”.

Mientras tanto, la Patrulla Fronteriza de El Paso comenzó inmediatamente a buscar la expansión de la iniciativa de Jeff Self a Nuevo México. “Aunque siempre es una decisión difícil separar a estas familias”, le escribió un agente al fiscal en funciones de ese estado, “se espera que esta separación actúe como elemento disuasorio para los padres que traen a sus hijos en las duras circunstancias que se dan al intentar entrar ilegalmente en Estados Unidos”. También se produjeron algunas separaciones en Yuma, Arizona, en el marco de otra iniciativa.

Las instrucciones que se enviaron a los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza que desarrollaron el programa piloto de separación de familias en El Paso, Texas, no incluían ninguna guía sobre cómo separar a los padres y a los hijos ni qué debía decirse a cada uno de ellos sobre lo que estaba ocurriendo.

En la primavera de 2017, Nora Núñez, una defensora pública en Yuma, se dio cuenta de que los bloques de celdas del tribunal federal estaban desbordados de detenidos, muchos de ellos padres histéricos. El sistema ya estaba sometido a la presión de otros procesos, por lo que Núñez tuvo que moverse con rapidez para evitar que todo se desmoronara. “Tener que ponerse muy firme con alguien que estaba llorando y alterado porque no sabía dónde estaba su hijo era desgarrador”, me dijo.

Aunque Núñez nunca había visto que se presentaran cargos por delitos menores contra los padres que emigraban con sus hijos, supuso que las familias se reunirían tan pronto como se completaran sus casos, por lo que apresuró el proceso aún más de lo habitual. Núñez se dio cuenta meses más tarde de que cuando sus clientes fueron devueltos a la custodia de inmigración, muchos de sus hijos habían sido enviados a refugios en diferentes estados.

Alma Acevedo, que entonces trabajaba en Bethany Christian Services en Michigan, dijo que la organización estaba inundada de niños tan inconsolables que enseñarles era imposible. “No eran solo lágrimas”, me dijo Acevedo, como informé en su momento. “Eran gritos”.

Cuando Acevedo consiguió contactar por teléfono a los padres, le pidieron consejo sobre si debían firmar el papeleo que les habían entregado los funcionarios de inmigración. Acevedo temía que se les pidiera a los padres que consintieran sus propias deportaciones. “Los padres dicen: ‘El oficial de inmigración me dijo que, si firmaba este documento, me devolverían a mi hijo’”, dijo. “Los padres firmaban desesperados y luego, lo siguiente que hacían era llamarme desde su país de origen y decir: ‘Estoy aquí, ¿dónde está mi hijo? Devuélveme a mi hijo’. Era muy triste y deprimente escuchar a los padres llorar todo el tiempo”.

Explicar la situación a los niños que habían sido separados era aún más difícil. “Los terapeutas y yo nos reuníamos con los niños y utilizábamos dibujos o marionetas. Les decíamos: ‘Tu papá está muy lejos’, y les mostrábamos algo así como ‘esto es Guatemala y esto es Estados Unidos, y ustedes están muy lejos’”. Aprendió a no darles a los niños separados ningún plazo concreto sobre cuándo podrían volver a ver a sus padres, porque los niños se aferraban a esas promesas, por vagas que fueran, y luego preguntaban por ellas constantemente. “Teníamos que decir: ‘En muchos, muchos días te reunirás con tu padre, pero tenemos que hacer mucho papeleo’”.

Los supervisores en Bethany y de otras organizaciones que gestionan refugios llamaron repetidamente a la sede de Salud y Servicios Humanos en Washington, presionando para obtener detalles sobre lo que estaba ocurriendo, pero no les dieron ninguno. A algunos les dijeron que no hablaran con los medios de comunicación.

Ignorar las advertencias

(Julio–diciembre de 2017)

Cuando John Kelly abandonó el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional para convertirse en el jefe de gabinete del presidente Trump en julio de 2017, Stephen Miller y Gene Hamilton se movieron en tándem para llenar el vacío de poder que creó la salida de Kelly. Parecían decididos a instituir las separaciones de familia en toda la nación.

Elaine Duke, adjunta de Kelly, se convirtió en la secretaria de Seguridad Nacional interina. Duke solo se había unido a la administración de Trump después de haber sido persuadida de su jubilación por antiguos colegas desesperados por ocupar los puestos vacantes en el DHS. A las pocas semanas de que tomara las riendas del departamento, se enfrentó a dos desastres naturales (el huracán Harvey y el huracán María) y Miller y Hamilton vieron una oportunidad en su distracción.

Miller llamó por teléfono al personal del DHS día y noche, acribillándolos con demandas e intimidando a los burócratas de carrera para que llegaran a un supuesto consenso sobre sus ideas. En una reunión celebrada ese otoño, Hamilton distribuyó un documento con una lista de más de una docena de políticas de inmigración que, según varias personas presentes, la Casa Blanca quería aplicar. En primer lugar, se proponían dos métodos para lograr la separación de las familias: por vía administrativa (colocando a los niños y a los padres en centros de detención separados) o a través de procesos penales, que pondrían a los padres bajo la custodia del Departamento de Justicia en lugar de la del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional. En ambos casos, los niños serían entregados a una división del Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos. (El proyecto piloto de El Paso todavía estaba en marcha, sin que lo supiera la mayoría de las personas de la sede del DHS, incluida Duke).

Duke se negó a seguir adelante con las separaciones administrativas y pidió asesoramiento sobre la iniciativa de la fiscalía a John Kelly, quien le aseguró que, si el presidente quería que hiciera algo, se lo hubiese dicho él mismo. Duke estuvo de acuerdo y procedió en consecuencia. “Había una desconexión entre los que tenían fuertes opiniones sobre los asuntos y los que podían firmar cosas”, me comentó Duke. “Y yo era la que tenía la autoridad para firmar cosas”.

La mayor parte del personal de Duke eran moderados. En ese momento, me dijeron muchos de ellos, seguían creyendo que la idea de Hamilton de separar a las familias a nivel nacional era tan descabellada que no la tomaban en serio. “Lo que recuerdo haber dicho es: ‘Esta es la propuesta más ridícula, así que esto ni siquiera requiere tanto trabajo’”, comentó un alto funcionario del DHS. Pero Miller, reconociendo la resistencia de Duke, empezó a rodearla, a su jefe de personal, Chad Wolf, que pidió que la oficina de políticas del DHS presentara documentación que respaldara las propuestas de Hamilton. Poco después, indicó este funcionario, “empezó a recibir llamadas telefónicas de Chad Wolf, y se notaba que estaba bajo una tremenda presión, que decía: ‘Tengo que tener esa documentación, ¿dónde estamos con la documentación?’. Y yo le dije: ‘Chad, tú sabes y yo sé que el gobierno no funciona así. Tenemos que conseguir un montón de miradas en el asunto. Tenemos que averiguar si esto es legal, moral, ético, una buena política, orientada al éxito, etc.’.

“Lo que siguió fue un montón de mala administración”, continuó el alto funcionario. “Se elaboraron malos borradores de memorandos. Subieron por la cadena, pero eran malos porque no eran políticas totalmente examinadas”.

Varios de los funcionarios del DHS que estuvieron presentes en la reunión con Hamilton me dijeron que después de unas semanas, las conversaciones sobre la separación de familias se agotaron, por lo que asumieron que la idea había sido abandonada, o al menos postergada. Pero no fue así, sino que se excluyó de las siguientes reuniones a los que se consideraban escépticos. “Creo que lo que más recuerdo es que yo no participaba en los debates”, afirmó Duke, y añadió que, tal vez por ser considerada una persona moderada, “no estaba en el círculo íntimo”.

Dentro y fuera del gobierno, la gente empezaba a notar que las separaciones ya estaban en marcha. Los abogados de inmigración que ejercían en Texas y Arizona empezaron a informar de casos individuales de separación a redes nacionales de activistas, que empezaron a redactar una queja oficial para presentarla al inspector general del DHS. Esos activistas también empezaron a compartir los casos con los periodistas, que prepararon artículos sobre ellos. Pero la oficina de prensa del DHS insistió en que no había cambiado ninguna política.

A lo largo del verano y el otoño surgieron problemas en las regiones piloto. Bajo las pautas impuestas por Richard Durbin, que todavía era el fiscal federal en funciones en El Paso, los abogados del DOJ en el sector rechazaron dos tercios de los casos que les remitió la Patrulla Fronteriza. A pesar de ello, algunos de los peores resultados que Durbin había previsto y tratado de evitar estaban ocurriendo. “Ahora nos enteramos de que apartamos a las madres demandadas que amamantan a sus bebés, no lo creí hasta que miré el registro de servicio y vi el hecho de que habíamos aceptado el enjuiciamiento de madres con niños de uno y dos años”, le escribió en agosto el jefe penal adjunto de Durbin. “El siguiente problema es que estos padres preguntan por el paradero de sus hijos y no obtienen respuesta”.

Los expedientes de la FOIA muestran que, en el verano de 2017, la Oficina de Derechos Civiles y Libertades Civiles del DHS, que sirve como vigilante interno de las violaciones de los derechos civiles por parte de la agencia, observó un drástico aumento de las quejas relacionadas con las separaciones, pero permaneció en la penumbra sobre lo que las motivaba. El aumento de las separaciones también estaba siendo rastreado por el HHS. Poco después de la reunión del día de San Valentín de 2017, en la que se presentó la idea de separar a las familias, Jonathan White y varios colegas iniciaron una campaña interna para tratar de impedir las separaciones.

Los documentos que obtuve muestran que White llevó sus preocupaciones sobre la propuesta de separación de familias a sus superiores muchas veces, y les pidió que preguntaran sobre ello al DHS. Subrayó que el sistema de albergues del HHS no estaba preparado para acoger a un gran número de niños separados de sus familias, que suelen ser más jóvenes que los que cruzan la frontera solos, y requieren un alojamiento especializado que escasea. Con la esperanza de captar la atención de otros miembros de la burocracia que podrían movilizarse contra la política, White insertó repetidamente referencias sutiles a las inminentes separaciones de familias en los informes internos y externos que escribió, incluso en los que no estaban relacionados con el tema. Mientras tanto, su colega James De La Cruz, administrador del HHS, inició un esfuerzo para rastrear todos los casos posibles de separación y para elaborar una estrategia sobre cómo ayudar a reunir al mayor número posible de familias.

Pero las preocupaciones de White fueron interceptadas por su jefe, designado políticamente, Scott Lloyd, que no estaba dispuesto a ayudarlo. Lloyd me contó que tiene muchos parientes en el ámbito policial y penitenciario; estaba predispuesto a apoyar las opiniones de las autoridades del orden público por encima de las de su propio departamento. “Tenía afinidad con el DHS y simplemente solía tomarles la palabra, y me molestaba cuando las personas no lo hacían”, comentó.

Finalmente, a mediados de noviembre de 2017, White consiguió llamar la atención de Lloyd con un alarmante correo electrónico. “Anoche tuvimos escasez de camas para bebés”, escribió White. “En general, las colocaciones de bebés parecen estar subiendo en las últimas semanas, y creemos que se debe a más separaciones de las madres por parte de la CBP”. Lloyd solicitó una llamada telefónica con Kevin McAleenan, para que White pudiera preguntar directamente al comisionado interino de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza sobre lo que estaba viendo. Durante la llamada, el 16 de noviembre, McAleenan repitió la declaración de John Kelly de que se había considerado una política de separación, pero que finalmente se había rechazado. Lloyd se aferraría a esta afirmación durante meses, incluso cuando las pruebas parecían reclamar una medida de su parte. (Hoy, Lloyd afirma que considera que los hechos demuestran que actuó adecuadamente).

Jonathan White, quien dirigió el sistema de albergues del HHS para niños inmigrantes no acompañados, apeló a sus jefes docenas de veces para tratar de evitar que se produjeran separaciones familiares. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP)

La advertencia de White hizo que McAleenan preguntara a su jefa interina de la Patrulla Fronteriza de Estados Unidos, Carla Provost, qué estaba ocurriendo. Provost se enteró de la iniciativa de El Paso a través de Gloria Chávez, una de sus adjuntas, e inmediatamente cerró el programa. “Todavía no ha explotado en los medios de comunicación, pero por supuesto tiene el potencial de hacerlo”, escribió Provost a McAleenan. Después de esta clara indicación de que el programa piloto podría ser controvertido, McAleenan y otros en la CBP no revelaron el hecho de que había existido, incluso a otras agencias gubernamentales que estaban afrontando sus consecuencias.

A finales de noviembre, un empleado de la Patrulla Fronteriza envió un correo electrónico a varios colegas, incluyendo a Chavez, preguntando cómo responder a las preguntas de una reportera del Houston Chronicle, Lomi Kriel, que había sido informada sobre la iniciativa. En ese momento, Chavez no solo conocía el programa piloto, sino que había sido reprendido por no haber avisado antes a sus superiores. Sin embargo, el portavoz de la Patrulla Fronteriza que en última instancia respondió a Kriel citó un antiguo manual de políticas en el que se afirmaba que el protocolo de la agencia exigía mantener la unidad familiar “en la mayor medida operativamente posible”. (Tanto Provost como Chavez declinaron hacer comentarios para este artículo).

El artículo de Kriel anticipó lo que saldría mal en un programa a nivel nacional al año siguiente: problemas que los funcionarios del DHS que sirvieron durante el mandato de Trump ahora afirman que nunca podrían haber anticipado. “No hay mecanismos para permitir sistemáticamente que un padre o un hijo se localicen mutuamente una vez que han sido separados”, afirmó una ONG a Kriel. “Los miembros de la familia pierden la pista del otro”.

En diciembre, activistas de la inmigración presentaron su queja ante la oficina del inspector general del DHS detallando las experiencias de más de una docena de familias separadas, lo que llevó a los funcionarios de la CBP a reunirse con el asesor principal de la agencia, según los registros obtenidos a través de una solicitud de la FOIA. La queja, que se compartió con el Congreso y los medios de comunicación, señalaba que los niños separados de sus familias acababan en albergues de diferentes estados, tan lejos como Nueva York.

Durante meses después, en respuesta a las preguntas de los periodistas, los representantes del DHS seguirían afirmando que no había habido ningún cambio en el trato de la agencia a los padres que viajaban con niños, sin reconocer que el programa piloto ya había separado a cientos de niños de sus padres.

En enero de 2018, con la advertencia de una posible “separación permanente de familias” y “nuevas poblaciones de huérfanos estadounidenses”, los documentos que obtuve muestran que la Oficina de Derechos Civiles y Libertades Civiles del DHS recomendó que se establecieran criterios para evitar la separación de niños muy pequeños o especialmente vulnerables. También recomendaron que se creara una base de datos en línea que los familiares pudieran utilizar para encontrarse en el sistema de detención. Esta herramienta, si se hubiera creado, hubiera resultado inconmensurablemente valiosa al año siguiente, cuando miles de padres buscaban a sus hijos.

El resumen interno de la Patrulla Fronteriza sobre el programa piloto, del que no se ha reportado hasta ahora, también destaca posibles problemas como que los niños se pierdan o acaben en centros de acogida de larga duración. El documento repite versiones de la frase separación de familias más de 10 veces. A pesar de ello, los responsables de la CBP afirmaron que no tuvieron conocimiento de ningún problema que surgiera durante el programa.

Ignorancia ambiental

(Diciembre de 2017–mayo de 2018)

Al final de 2017, según funcionarios del DHS y de la Casa Blanca, Stephen Miller parecía estar perdiendo la paciencia con Elaine Duke, quien se había negado a aprobar ninguno de sus planes principales. En lugar de seguir discutiendo con el secretario interino del DHS, los Hawks de la Casa Blanca comenzaron a buscar un reemplazo.

El debate se centró en el Secretario de Estado de Kansas, Kris Kobach, quien había hecho carrera impulsando políticas controvertidas contra los inmigrantes. A John Kelly le preocupaba que alguien como Kobach supervisara el DHS. Por esta razón, propuso a Kirstjen Nielsen, quien había trabajado con él en la agencia y lo acompañó a la Casa Blanca como su número 2. Trump aceptó la recomendación de Kelly, quizá pensando que Nielsen sería flexible. Según sus colegas, Gene Hamilton estaba tan molesto cuando el presidente eligió a un candidato moderado para dirigir el DHS que se fue a trabajar para su exjefe Jeff Sessions en el Departamento de Justicia, pensando que desde allí podría tener un mayor impacto en las agresivas restricciones de inmigración.

Es de alguna manera irónico que la persona más asociada con la política de inmigración más dura de la administración Trump haya resultado ser Nielsen. Ella firmó el memorando que permite a los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza separar a los niños de sus padres para que se pueda procesar a los adultos. Pero Nielsen no había querido aprobar la política de Tolerancia Cero; durante meses, se negó a hacerlo. De hecho, a lo largo de su mandato como secretaria, los colegas de la administración acusarían a Nielsen de ser una “squish” una y otra vez. Cada vez iba un paso más allá para calmar a sus críticos. Al final, los siguió ciegamente.

En comparación con muchos de sus colegas de línea dura en el DHS, Nielsen era tecnocrática y prudente. Después de graduarse de Georgetown y de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Virginia, trabajó en un estudio privado de abogados en Texas, hasta que el 11 de septiembre la motivó a aceptar un puesto en la recién establecida Administración de Seguridad del Transporte (que pronto se convertiría en parte del DHS); también trabajó en la Casa Blanca de Bush y con el tiempo se convirtió en una de las principales expertas del país en política de seguridad cibernética.

Los propios empleados de Nielsen notaron que ella tenía considerablemente menos experiencia en liderazgo que cualquier secretario anterior del DHS, y algunos no estuvieron de acuerdo con eso. Antes de unirse a la administración Trump, había dirigido una empresa de consultoría que tenía unos cuantos empleados. Ahora dirigía una agencia que empleaba a un cuarto de millón de personas. Era excepcionalmente trabajadora, pero de una manera que no siempre hacía que sus colegas la quisieran. “Ella leía resúmenes de 80 páginas para el desayuno, el almuerzo y la cena”, me dijo un funcionario de alto rango del DHS, y agregó que, en las reuniones, Nielsen “hacía preguntas que te avergonzaban porque sabía más que tú sobre lo que se suponía que debías estar haciendo”.

Nielsen se ponía a la defensiva ante cualquier crítica al departamento. A diferencia de Kelly, que había dejado que los miembros del personal revisaran la pila de clips de noticias publicados sobre el DHS y solo compartieran con él los que consideraban importantes, Nielsen los revisaba de camino al trabajo todas las mañanas y ridiculizaba al personal porque no le habían avisado con anticipación sobre las historias negativas. Pero a los ojos de los asesores y el personal clave, cualquier cosa que escribiera la prensa era inherentemente sospechosa, probablemente histeria liberal. Por esta razón, veían las demandas de Nielsen de investigaciones sobre las denuncias de irregularidades por parte del personal del DHS como una molesta pérdida de tiempo. Cuando los medios nacionales describieron las separaciones de familias, gran parte de su personal no creía lo que se estaba informando, incluso cuando la evidencia clara lo respaldaba.

El DHS del que Nielsen tomó el control era prácticamente irreconocible en comparación con el que ella había trabajado cuando se inició bajo la presidencia de Bush. Su energía ahora estaba dirigida hacia la frontera suroeste, con mucha menos atención enfocada en otros asuntos, incluido el problema que había provocado su creación: el terrorismo global. La Casa Blanca convocó a Nielsen para hablar sobre inmigración con tanta frecuencia que comenzó a trabajar en una oficina improvisada en la sede cercana de CBP en Pennsylvania Avenue, lo que la acercó mucho a sus jefes de control de inmigración, Tom Homan y Kevin McAleenan.

Desde el momento en que recibió la confirmación, Nielsen envió un aluvión de propuestas de política de inmigración de Stephen Miller, que transmitió a través de incesantes llamadas telefónicas día y noche. Cuando John Kelly era secretario, ignoraba las llamadas nocturnas de Miller. Pero Nielsen terminó escuchándolo quejarse después de la medianoche con frecuencia.

Nielsen escuchaba a Miller, ya que sabía que su aprobación era crucial para su éxito en el trabajo. “Yo decía, ‘Está bien, Stephen, tendremos una reunión al respecto; conseguiremos los abogados y descubriremos qué es posible y lo analizaremos’”, me dijo. “O le decía: ‘¿Hablaste con alguien en CBP? ¿Hablaste con alguien en HHS? ¿Hablaste con los abogados? ¿Qué dice [el abogado de la Casa Blanca] Don McGahn?’ Solo era él diciendo cosas y yo diciendo: ‘Está bien, Stephen, encontremos un proceso aquí. No hago política solo en base a las llamadas telefónicas contigo. Tenemos todo un departamento que dirijo’”.

Elaine Duke fungió como secretaria interina de Seguridad Nacional después de que John Kelly se convirtiera en jefe de gabinete de la Casa Blanca. Ella declinó la autorización relacionada con la separación de familias, y pronto fue marginada. (Justin Sullivan / AFP / Getty)

En este punto, Miller se había infiltrado profundamente en el DHS y había identificado aliados en sus peldaños más bajos que estaban de acuerdo con él o estaban abiertos a la persuasión. Bajo la cadena de mando tradicional, solo el liderazgo superior de un departamento tiene contacto directo con la Casa Blanca, para evitar malentendidos y decisiones tomadas por personas que carecen de autoridad. Ahora, empleados al azar en todo el DHS estaban hablando directamente con Miller y su equipo, quienes luego afirmaban tener la aceptación de sus ideas “del DHS”.

Las incursiones de Miller se extendieron al departamento de comunicaciones. Por ejemplo, solicitó fotos de inmigrantes detenidos con tatuajes, presuntamente para sugerir que la mayoría de los que cruzaban la frontera eran criminales reincidentes. Cuando se enfrentó a un rechazo, Lauren Tomlinson, asistente principal de comunicaciones del DHS, me dijo: “una llamada telefónica iba a otra persona más abajo en la cadena, y lo siguiente que sabíamos es que tenían las fotos. Simplemente seguían llamando hasta que conseguían un sí”.

Miller bloqueó a varios candidatos para reemplazar a Gene Hamilton como asesor principal del secretario del DHS, aparentemente con la intención de asumir él mismo el cargo de manera informal. El personal de Nielsen aprendió a no presentar a Miller ningún candidato que hubiera trabajado en la administración Bush, porque sería automáticamente rechazado. Unas cuantas personas pasaron por el puesto durante los meses siguientes, pero ninguno duró mucho, porque “nadie podía pasar la prueba de fuego de Miller”, recordó un alto funcionario del DHS.

Poco después de la confirmación de Nielsen en diciembre, los colegas de Kevin McAleenan dicen que comenzó a hacer campaña para una reunión sobre el aumento de los cruces fronterizos, algo que la Casa Blanca estaba presionando para que contuviera. Al igual que Nielsen, había buscado trabajo en Seguridad Nacional después del 11 de septiembre, y dejaba atrás una carrera en derecho corporativo. En la era de Trump, también estaba bajo presión para demostrar que no era un aplastador. Había superado a aquellos en el liderazgo de CBP que se habían abierto camino desde las líneas del frente de la Patrulla Fronteriza y que tendían a ver a los reclutas de liderazgo con currículums elegantes como “contrataciones de la calle”. Brandon Judd, el jefe del sindicato de la Patrulla Fronteriza, podría haber sido el escéptico más influyente de McAleenan. Judd se mantuvo en contacto cercano con Trump después de ganarse su afecto con un respaldo temprano en 2016, y en ocasiones asistía a reuniones privadas en el Despacho Oval donde presionó para que despidieran a McAleenan por ser demasiado débil en la aplicación de la ley.

Pero McAleenan atravesó hábilmente este terreno. Podría pasar por un Hawk, mientras profesaba una adhesión al evangelio de la disuasión, pero los candidatos moderados y los progresistas en el Capitolio apreciaron que fue más refinado que sus colegas más descarados durante las sesiones informativas del Congreso. Utilizó una gran cantidad de frases en latín (sui generis, ex ante, ex post facto) y palabras como confirmatorio, incluso durante una pequeña charla. En las reuniones, recitaba datos y estadísticas con tal facilidad que las personas se mostraban reacias a desafiarlo. Durante sus frecuentes apariciones en los medios, describió duras políticas de cumplimiento, y no se mostró como alguien que tenía una opinión muy fuerte acerca de ellas de una forma u otra, sino como el adulto sensato en la sala que se aseguraba de que se implementaran sin problemas. Con el tiempo, más de 15 de los colegas de McAleenan me dijeron que se convirtió en uno de los defensores más enérgicos de la Tolerancia Cero.

Chad Wolf, quien ahora era el jefe de personal interino de Nielsen, dijo a McAleenan que si quería una reunión con Nielsen sobre el creciente número de cruces fronterizos, primero necesitaba elaborar una propuesta con posibles soluciones para que ella las estudiara. A Nielsen le gustaba estar bien preparada antes de las reuniones, para evitar que la pusieran en aprietos por cuestiones que no había considerado adecuadamente. Esta terminó siendo una de las principales formas en que las políticas de inmigración extremas se retrasaron bajo las órdenes de Nielsen: Hacía preguntas en las reuniones que su personal no estaba preparado para responder y luego los enviaba a buscar más información.

Como secretaria de Seguridad Nacional, Kirstjen Nielsen firmó el memorando que autorizó a los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza a arrebatar a los niños de sus padres. (Departamento de Seguridad Nacional de EE. UU.)

“Había una broma que todos hacíamos, porque todo necesitaba la aprobación de la secretaria”, me dijo John Zadrozny, del Consejo de Política Nacional de la Casa Blanca. “Así que enviábamos algo al escritorio de la secretaria, y pasaban semanas en las que no habíamos recibido nada, y decíamos, ‘¿Dónde está esto?’ ‘Oh, está en el escritorio de la secretaria, jajaja’. Lo que significa que se quedó allí porque ella no deseaba lidiar con eso... Básicamente, siempre estábamos haciendo una tarea imposible”.

Cuando McAleenan y Homan finalmente presentaron una serie de ideas a Nielsen, ella y otros que estaban allí dicen que comenzaron proponiendo la separación administrativa de las familias. (Homan dice que no recuerda esto). Esto hubiera permitido a la agencia separar no solo a las familias que cruzaron la frontera ilegalmente, sino también a aquellas que se presentaron en los puertos de entrada legales y solicitaron asilo. Nielsen rechazó la idea sin pensarlo dos veces e invocó la decisión anterior de John Kelly, que consideraba que respetaba la política del DHS, le dijo a los hombres. Homan y McAleenan respondieron que los cruces fronterizos habían aumentado desde el mandato de Kelly como secretario y que otras estrategias para controlarlos no estaban funcionando. “Mi respuesta fue más o menos así: ‘Estoy de acuerdo en que necesitamos hacer algo grande’”, me dijo Nielsen. “‘Hablemos de opciones realistas’”.

McAleenan y Homan luego comenzaron a describir una iniciativa para procesar judicialmente a todos los adultos, incluidos los que viajan con niños, que cruzaron la frontera ilegalmente, y dijeron a Nielsen que un programa piloto en este sentido ya se había implementado con éxito en El Paso y que los procesos judiciales podrían servir como un elemento disuasorio a mayor escala.

Nielsen estaba molesta porque se había implementado un programa piloto, aparentemente como desafío a las órdenes de Kelly. Preguntó cómo el aparato de control fronterizo absorbería la carga de tantos procesamientos adicionales. McAleenan y Homan, quien ahora era el jefe del ICE, le aseguraron con irritación que las agencias involucradas “tenían un proceso”, sin especificar de qué se trataba. Insatisfecha con sus respuestas, Nielsen terminó la reunión diciéndoles que revisaran las respuestas a sus preguntas y le informaran.

Elizabeth Neumann, subjefa de personal de Nielsen, me dijo que estaba conmocionada por la indiferencia con la que McAleenan y Homan habían propuesto quitarle a un gran número de niños a sus padres. “No estaban captando la humanidad de la situación; solo se trataba de ‘Necesito sacarme a Stephen [Miller] de encima. Necesito sacarme al presidente de encima’”, dijo. (McAleenan niega esta información).

Después de la reunión, Neumann, que había pasado más de una década trabajando con Nielsen dentro y fuera del gobierno, dijo que se acercó a otro asesor principal para preguntarle si realmente se estaba considerando quitarles los niños a sus padres. Si la respuesta era sí, planeaba ejercer presión en contra de esto. El colega le dijo a Neumann que Nielsen se mantenía firme contra la separación de familias. “Me sentí realmente aliviada porque no sentí que tenía que tener la próxima conversación”, dijo Neumann.

Sí se dio cuenta de que la segunda propuesta, remitir a un proceso judicial a todos los adultos que cruzan la frontera ilegalmente, tendría el mismo resultado y todavía estaba sobre la mesa.

En todo Washington, surgió en varias reuniones una nueva iniciativa de procesamiento judicial de inmigrantes que la Casa Blanca estaba considerando. Pero la blandura con la que se describió, como una forma de tomar medidas enérgicas contra los infractores de la ley, sirvió como un juego de manos. Debido a que la fluidez en la política de inmigración es tan rara en Washington, pocas personas captaron todas las implicaciones de lo que se sugería hasta que ya estaba sucediendo.

Mientras Nielsen debatía estas propuestas, mis fuentes en el DHS me alertaron sobre su existencia. Una vez que confirmé los detalles, The New York Times publicó mi informe en diciembre de 2017, que incluía la historia de un padre y su hijo de 1 año que ya habían sido separados. The Washington Post publicó una historia sobre las propuestas el mismo día. La respuesta que ambos periódicos obtuvieron de la oficina de prensa del DHS no solo no reconoció que ya se estaban produciendo separaciones, también describió a las familias que buscan asilo en los Estados Unidos como abusivas de sus propios hijos: “Es cruel que los padres pongan la vida de sus hijos en manos de organizaciones criminales transnacionales y contrabandistas que no tienen ningún respeto por la vida humana y, con frecuencia, abusan o abandonan a los niños. El peligroso viaje ilegal hacia el norte no es lugar para niños pequeños y debemos buscar todas las medidas posibles para protegerlos”. La declaración aludía a “cambios de procedimiento, política, regulatorios y legislativos” que se implementarían “en un futuro cercano”.

A diferencia de Kirstjen Nielsen, Jeff Sessions es exactamente el tipo de persona que uno podría esperar que fuera responsable de una política que provocaría separaciones generalizadas de familias. A lo largo de su carrera, su enfoque tanto de la justicia penal como de la aplicación de la ley de inmigración podría definirse con la frase tolerancia cero, un término técnico de aplicación de la ley que casi siempre se usa de manera eufemística, porque es imposible acabar con todos los delitos. Pero para Sessions, la frase es literal. Apoyó el cumplimiento de todas las leyes, o al menos las que consideró importantes, en la mayor medida posible, sin lugar para matices o excepciones humanitarias.

En entrevistas, los funcionarios del DHS culparon a Sessions por ordenar la separación de miles de familias. Algunos miembros del personal de Sessions en el Departamento de Justicia también lo culparon. Gene Hamilton y Rod Rosenstein, el fiscal general adjunto, quienes se reveló que presionaron de forma persistente por la Tolerancia Cero en un informe publicado por el inspector general del Departamento de Justicia, dijeron a la oficina del Inspector General que lo hicieron únicamente bajo las órdenes de Sessions. (Sessions dice que el informe parecía estar políticamente sesgado, ya que señalaba el hecho de que se había filtrado antes de las elecciones de 2020. Dice que el presidente Trump había ordenado claramente al poder ejecutivo “reducir la ilegalidad migratoria en la frontera”. Rosenstein se negó a comentar para este artículo).

Si bien es cierto que Sessions presionó mucho por políticas agresivas de aplicación de la ley de inmigración, incluida la Tolerancia Cero, nada de lo que encontré en mis informes sugiere que procesar a los padres que viajan con niños fue idea suya, y nada de lo que hizo como fiscal general hizo que la política entrara en vigor desde una perspectiva legal.

No está claro exactamente cuánto entendió Sessions sobre la Tolerancia Cero. Dicen sus antiguos colegas que él no es alguien que se enreda en los detalles o que deja que los hechos se interpongan en el camino de lo que él piensa que es una buena idea. Sessions tuvo algunas distracciones durante su mandato como fiscal general debido a que se enfrentó a los constantes rumores de que había tenido interacciones inapropiadas con agentes rusos. También estaba tratando de salvar su relación con el presidente Trump, quien nunca perdonó a Sessions por recusarse de la investigación del Congreso sobre los vínculos de Trump con Rusia.

El 7 de mayo de 2018, el Procurador General Jeff Sessions brindó una conferencia de prensa en San Diego para hacer pública la política de Tolerancia Cero. (Ariana Drehsler / Bloomberg / Getty)

En una burocracia en funcionamiento, nada de esto debería haber representado un gran impedimento para la comprensión de Sessions de la Tolerancia Cero: Por lo general, un secretario del Gabinete toma decisiones sobre la base de las recomendaciones presentadas por los asesores, que a su vez se basan en el análisis de expertos. Pero el principal asesor de inmigración de Sessions fue Gene Hamilton. Como uno de los pocos miembros del personal del Departamento de Justicia totalmente dedicado al tema, Hamilton trabajó en un aislamiento relativo, con pocos colegas que desafiaran sus posiciones. Asimismo, Hamilton mostró falta de voluntad para tomarse en serio cualquiera de las trampas de la política que le alertaron antes y durante la ejecución.

Mientras Hamilton se preparaba para proponer formalmente la Tolerancia Cero a Sessions, la oficina de Rosenstein pidió a John Bash, el fiscal federal recién confirmado en El Paso, una sesión informativa sobre el programa piloto de separación en ese lugar. Bash se había desempeñado anteriormente como asesor legal de la Casa Blanca y era considerado un aliado confiable de Trump. Bash pidió a sus colegas nuevos en El Paso que lo pusieran al día sobre el programa piloto, según extractos de correos electrónicos que publicó el inspector general del Departamento de Justicia. Luego informó a Hamilton y otros en el DOJ. Sus notas indican que la iniciativa había enfrentado un “retroceso significativo” por parte de las partes interesadas locales; también hacen referencia a un litigio pendiente en el Distrito Oeste de Texas presentado en nombre de cinco personas a las que les habían arrebatado sus hijos (y en un caso un nieto). En ese caso, el juez de tribunal inferior se quejó de que los acusados ante él estaban “completamente incomunicados” con sus hijos “mientras eran procesados por un delito muy leve” y que los padres y los niños aparentemente no tenían forma de encontrarse después de que los separaran.

Hamilton luego dijo al inspector general que no recordaba la reunión. Este es el primero de muchos casos documentados, todos los cuales diría después al inspector general que no podía recordar, cuando se advirtió directamente a Hamilton sobre los problemas que ocurrirían si el programa piloto se expandía a todo el país. De todas maneras, siguió adelante.

Unas semanas más tarde, Bash recibió un memorando de sus colegas en el que se explicaban con mayor detalle los problemas que habían surgido durante la prueba piloto. Pero la sede no se puso en contacto con él sobre la expansión, por lo que no compartió el memorando con nadie, y luego dijo al inspector general que había asumido que la idea había desaparecido. Nadie en la sede se puso en contacto con Richard Durbin, el fiscal federal interino en El Paso durante el programa piloto, a quien se le había dicho que estaban separando bebés de sus madres, para obtener su opinión.

Mientras tanto, defensores de la inmigración seguían recibiendo noticias sobre las familias que habían sido separadas durante el programa piloto pero que aún no se habían reunido. También estaban escuchando informes de familias que habían sido separadas luego de presentarse en un puerto, donde es perfectamente legal solicitar la entrada a Estados Unidos. Los defensores se prepararon para presentar una demanda, que esperaban tuviera como resultado una orden judicial a nivel nacional contra las separaciones y una orden judicial para reunir a las familias que ya habían sido separadas. Lee Gelernt, un abogado del Proyecto de Derechos de los Inmigrantes de la ACLU, lideraba el caso. “No es solo que los padres y los niños estén separados durante meses y meses”, me dijo Gelernt en ese momento. “Es que los padres no tienen idea de dónde están sus hijos, qué les está pasando o si van a volver a ver a sus hijos”.

Gelernt reunía consejos de defensores con conexiones con trabajadores de refugios en el Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos, quienes desafiaron las órdenes de no hablar públicamente sobre lo que estaba sucediendo, preocupados por lo que estaban viendo. Los trabajadores del refugio “ni siquiera saben de dónde vienen los niños, quién es el padre, dónde está el padre”, me dijo Gelernt. “Tienen 2, 3, 4, 5 años”.

Durante este período, cada vez que preguntaba a los funcionarios de la administración de Trump sobre un caso específico, decían que la separación se había producido solo porque se pensaba que el niño estaba atrapado en un plan de trata o en peligro, lo que habría estado en consonancia con políticas anteriores. Pero en muchos de estos casos, los abogados que representan a las familias dijeron que ninguna de esas circunstancias era cierta.

En febrero de 2018, Gelernt conoció a una mujer de la República Democrática del Congo que había sido separada de su hija de 6 años. La niña había pasado varios meses en un refugio del HHS en Chicago; su madre estaba detenida en un centro de detención de inmigrantes en el desierto en las afueras de San Diego. Cuando entró en una habitación de bloques de hormigón para encontrarse con Gelernt, parecía demacrada y confundida, “casi catatónica por lo que le había sucedido”, me dijo Gelernt. La mujer explicó que cuando ella y su hija cruzaron la frontera, los agentes las llevaron a un motel para interrogarlas, una práctica común cuando las instalaciones fronterizas se quedan sin espacio, y las pusieron en habitaciones contiguas. Debido a que la madre y la hija, que se conocieron en el tribunal como la Sra. L y S. S., respectivamente, habían estado viviendo en América del Sur antes de solicitar asilo en los Estados Unidos, S. S. había aprendido español. Cuando los agentes comenzaron a hablar sobre separar a la niña de su madre, tal vez pensando que estaban siendo discretos al hablar en español, la Sra. L escuchó los gritos de su hija a través de la pared.

Aunque Gelernt había estado planeando armar un caso para una demanda colectiva, la reunión lo molestó tanto que comenzó a redactar una queja en nombre de la Sra. L tan pronto como regresó del centro de detención. “Su hija ha estado lejos casi cuatro meses”, me dijo en ese momento, “y simplemente no podía justificar la demora de ir al tribunal por más tiempo para que ella y su hija se reunieran. Al escucharla hablar sobre su hija gritando ‘No me alejes de mi mami’”.

Mientras esperaban un fallo en el caso de la Sra. L, Gelernt y sus colegas se apresuraron a preparar presentaciones para otros demandantes, y agregaron rápidamente a otra madre, conocida como la Sra. C, que había sido separada de su hijo de 14 años durante el programa piloto de El Paso seis meses antes. (La Sra. C había terminado en el oeste de Texas; su hijo había llegado en un refugio en Chicago). En este punto, la ACLU pidió al juez que certificara el caso como una demanda colectiva y estimaron que para entonces se habían producido al menos 400 a 500 separaciones según los relatos que había recopilado, algunos de fuentes gubernamentales interesadas.

El gobierno respondió a la demanda de Gelernt en un informe legal con el mismo mensaje que los periodistas seguían escuchando: que el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional no tenía una política de separación y que nada había cambiado en su trato a las familias migrantes. La respuesta no reconoció la existencia de ningún programa piloto. “Tal política”, decía el informe del gobierno, “sería la antítesis de los valores de bienestar infantil de la Oficina de Reasentamiento de Refugiados”.

El gobierno argumentó que los agentes habían separado a la Sra. L de su hija porque se mostraron escépticos de que la pareja estuviera realmente relacionada; la Sra. L no había proporcionado documentos que probaran que ella era la madre de la niña. Gelernt pensó que esto era simplemente un pretexto para justificar la separación. “Pasó tres meses caminando hasta aquí”, me dijo Gelernt. “Se la quitaron. Así que, por supuesto, ella no tenía documentos”. Un juez solicitó una prueba de ADN, que demostró que la Sra. L era, de hecho, la madre de S. S. Poco después, el gobierno liberó a la Sra. L en la calle frente al centro de detención del desierto. Varios días después, con la ayuda de abogados, la Sra. L se reunió con su hija.

En la primavera de 2018, me enteré de la lista de niños separados que estaba compilando James De La Cruz, colega de Jonathan White en la Oficina de Reasentamiento de Refugiados (ORR). De La Cruz y unos cuantos otros en ORR estaban usando la lista para buscar ayuda del ICE para localizar a los padres de esos niños y tratar de reunirlos, o al menos ponerlos en contacto por teléfono; muchos de los padres separados todavía estaban detenidos o había sido deportados. De La Cruz y el pequeño grupo de sus colegas que tuvieron acceso a la lista mantuvieron en secreto su existencia, ya que sabían que el documento sería controvertido porque la administración aún negaba públicamente que se estuviera separando a los niños de sus padres en la frontera con mayor frecuencia que en administraciones anteriores.

La mayoría de los que tenían acceso a la lista inicialmente me dijeron que les preocupaba que un artículo de noticias al respecto pudiera identificarlos, o peor aún, que de alguna manera pudiera poner en peligro lo que era el único esfuerzo conocido para rastrear los casos de separación de familias en ese momento. Pero a principios de abril, la lista creció hasta incluir más de 700 nombres, lo suficiente como para que mis fuentes comenzaran a concluir que la situación era demasiado grave como para seguir sin reportar. Además, sabían que el número total de separaciones era aún mayor: La lista contenía solo los nombres de los niños cuyos casos se habían informado a la sede del HHS por el personal del refugio.

En ese momento, me comuniqué con las oficinas de asuntos públicos del HHS y el DHS al mismo tiempo, les informé que me estaba preparando para publicar una historia sobre la lista de niños separados y les pedí que confirmaran su autenticidad. Mark Weber, un vocero del HHS, dice que llamó a Katie Waldman, una vocera del DHS que más tarde se casó con Stephen Miller. Waldman le gritó, diciéndole que el DHS no estaba separando a los niños de sus padres. (Waldman me dijo lo mismo, que estaría engañando al público estadounidense si publicaba mi historia como estaba planeado). Pero los propios colegas de Weber en el HHS finalmente reconocieron que De La Cruz estaba al tanto de las separaciones, según correos electrónicos que se hicieron públicos más tarde como parte de una investigación del Congreso. Cuando Weber habló con Waldman y le dijo que planeaba corroborar mi historia, dice que Waldman y su jefe, Tyler Houlton, insistieron en que negara oficialmente que el DHS estuviera separando familias más que en el pasado. “Me hicieron mentir”, me dijo Weber recientemente. (Waldman dijo que Weber no recuerda exactamente la conversación; Houlton no respondió a una solicitud de comentarios). Waldman y Houlton proporcionaron una declaración para mi artículo del Times, en el que insistían en que las familias no estaban siendo separadas con fines de proceso judicial y disuasión. Mientras tanto, las separaciones seguían aumentando. Para el 23 de abril, tres días después de la publicación de la historia, los documentos muestran que De La Cruz había rastreado 856 separaciones, más de una cuarta parte de las cuales involucraban a niños menores de 5 años.

Cuando salió a la luz mi historia en el Times, Scott Lloyd, el jefe de De La Cruz, estaba angustiado. “Yo pensaba: ‘¿Por qué tenemos una lista?’” Lloyd me dijo recientemente. “Parecía que la ORR vigilaba al DHS. Y posiblemente lo filtraba a The New York Times”. Lloyd pidió al personal de la ORR que dejara de agregar a la lista porque el documento hacía que “pareciera que algo que no estaba sucediendo sucedía, porque no sabía que existiera ningún tipo de política de tolerancia cero”. Pero De La Cruz dijo a Lloyd que sentía que la lista era necesaria para garantizar que los niños se reunieran con sus familias. Continuó agregando a la lista.

Hasta principios de la primavera de 2018, los cruces fronterizos continuaron aumentando. Los comentaristas de Fox News tomaron nota de la tendencia y culparon a Kirstjen Nielsen. Stephen Miller incitó al presidente a reprenderla. Sabiendo que a Trump no le gustaba leer informes oficiales, Miller imprimía artículos de algunos periodistas de inmigración selectos en medios de derecha y los dejaba en el escritorio del presidente, como evidencia de que Nielsen era una líder deficiente. Pronto, se convocó a Nielsen al ala oeste para reuniones aún más frecuentes, a veces diarias, sobre qué hacer. Los debates consistieron principalmente en que Miller se quejaba sobre cómo las ideas que había estado presentando durante meses se habían estancado de forma innecesaria. Jeff Sessions a veces exageraba diciendo al presidente que Nielsen estaba siendo una cobarde, lo que le permitía escapar de la ira de Trump, aunque solo fuera temporalmente. Una vez, Sessions dijo a Trump que Nielsen simplemente podía optar por no permitir que la gente cruzara la frontera, pero se negaba a hacerlo. Trump gritó a Nielsen, lo que hizo que sus colegas del Gabinete se sintieran profundamente incómodos. Kelly intervino y trató de aplazar la reunión, pero se mantuvo callado sobre las políticas específicas.

De hecho, la limitación del enfoque de Kelly para oponerse a la Tolerancia Cero puede haber sido que se concentró en sus preocupaciones logísticas frente a los Hawks. Kelly sintió que ese enfoque era el más probable para detener la implementación de la política, pero los Hawks ahora dicen que no registraron la oposición general de Kelly, solo que pensó que requeriría recursos adicionales. (Kelly dice que su oposición a la separación de familias fue clara durante su mandato en la administración).

Según sus colegas, Tom Homan y Kevin McAleenan continuaron minimizando la importancia de la Tolerancia Cero ya que simplemente querían aumentar la aplicación de las leyes que ya estaban en los libros. “¿Bajo qué autoridad se le dice a la policía ‘No haga cumplir la ley?’” Nielsen me dijo que McAleenan le dijo a ella. “Él básicamente decía, ‘Mira, no me estás permitiendo hacer mi trabajo. Tenemos que dejar la conversación y seguir adelante y hacer esto’”. (McAleenan dice que nunca sugirió que la política no fuera controvertida y que planteó preocupaciones logísticas a Nielsen en varias ocasiones. Homan dice que nunca presionó a Nielsen).

Niños llevados a un centro de detención en Tornillo, Texas, en junio de 2018. (Mike Blake / Reuters / Alamy)

Nielsen todavía sentía que no tenía suficiente información para tomar una decisión: ¿Tenían las estaciones de la Patrulla Fronteriza la capacidad de albergar a migrantes adicionales que esperaban que los enviaran a los tribunales? ¿Tenía el Departamento de Justicia suficientes abogados para hacerse cargo de casos adicionales? ¿Tenían los alguaciles de EE. UU. suficientes vehículos para transportar a los padres separados? ¿Qué pasaría con los niños mientras se realizaban los procesos? Nielsen y sus colegas dicen que McAleenan y Homan fueron despectivos, lo que implica que no era su trabajo como secretaria enredarse en los detalles de la aplicación; ella estaba micro gestionando.

Cada miembro clave del equipo de liderazgo del DHS de la administración de Trump a quien entrevisté me dijo que las separaciones nunca tuvieron la intención de desarrollarse como lo hicieron. Pero cuando les pedí que me explicaran cómo se suponía que funcionaban las separaciones, los juicios y las reunificaciones, cada uno de ellos me dio una versión diferente del plan. Algunos dijeron que pensaban que padres e hijos se reunirían en la pista de un aeropuerto y que los deportarían juntos. Otros dijeron que pensaban que después de ser procesados, los padres regresarían a las estaciones de la Patrulla Fronteriza, donde sus hijos estarían esperando. Otros pensaron que se enviaría a los niños a las instalaciones del HHS solo por unos pocos días. Pero en realidad no importa qué plan se suponía que había prevalecido: ninguno de ellos era factible ni tenía ningún precedente. Esto indica el poco conocimiento del sistema que tenía la mayoría de estas personas y la falta de claridad en la comunicación a lo largo de lo que pasó por el proceso de planificación.

A principios de abril de 2018, Stephen Miller, Gene Hamilton y Kevin McAleenan (quien recientemente había sido confirmado como comisionado de CBP) comenzaron a citar varios documentos para insistir en que Nielsen estaba violando una orden legal al retrasar la implementación de la Tolerancia Cero, según colegas. Un documento fue una orden ejecutiva, “Mejora de la seguridad pública en el interior de los Estados Unidos”, elaborada por Miller y su división durante la transición y emitida en enero de 2017. Estaba claramente dirigido al ICE, que opera en el interior del país, a diferencia de la Patrulla Fronteriza. Pero los Hawks dijeron que, al negarse a ordenar a los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza que remitieran a los padres para el proceso judicial, Nielsen estaba violando una cláusula de la orden que decía: “No podemos ejecutar fielmente las leyes de inmigración de los Estados Unidos si exentamos clases o categorías de extranjeros expulsables de la aplicación potencial de la ley”.

Se emitieron dos documentos nuevos el mismo día, 6 de abril de 2018, quizá para aumentar la presión sobre Nielsen. En un documento, Jeff Sessions anunció oficialmente una nueva “política de tolerancia cero”, según la cual los fiscales estadounidenses, “en la medida de lo posible”, aceptarían el 100 % de los casos de entrada ilegal que les remitiera la Patrulla Fronteriza. (Sessions también había emitido un memorando similar el año anterior). El segundo, un memorando presidencial, pedía en general el fin de la aplicación de la ley de inmigración de “atrapar y liberar”. Los documentos no significaron mucho para la Patrulla Fronteriza en términos sustanciales, lo que Nielsen, una abogada, teóricamente debería haber sabido: Sessions no tenía autoridad sobre esa agencia, incluidos los casos que sus agentes remitían para procesamiento judicial. Además, el memorando de Trump no tenía directivas específicas sobre los padres que viajan con niños.

La Patrulla Fronteriza podría haber seguido procesando a las familias de la misma manera que siempre lo ha hecho sin violar ninguna ley ni orden. Los registros muestran que los sectores de la Patrulla Fronteriza incluso recibieron orientación que indicaba que la iniciativa de Sessions se aplicaba solo a adultos que viajaban sin niños. Pero sus colegas dicen que McAleenan, Hamilton y Miller dijeron nuevamente a Nielsen que estaba desafiando las órdenes si se negaba a procesar judicialmente a los padres que viajaban con niños.

Como el anuncio de la Tolerancia Cero se exageró a Nielsen por su supuesta importancia, se le restó importancia a los fiscales estadounidenses a quienes afectaría en última instancia. Al principio, se les dijo que el memorando de Sessions no era significativo. Según el informe del inspector general del Departamento de Justicia, Sessions había pedido a Hamilton que “se asegurara de que fuera viable y que no hubiera señales de alerta” antes de escribirlo. Pero Hamilton no lo hizo. En cambio, el DOJ solicitó retroalimentación sobre el documento a los cinco fiscales estadounidenses destacados a lo largo de la frontera suroeste, sin dejarles en claro que cambiaría la forma en que el departamento trata a las familias migrantes. Más adelante, los abogados le dijeron al inspector general que asumieron que los padres continuarían estando exentos de procesos judiciales por entrada ilegal, como lo habían estado durante toda la historia del DHS. Ryan Patrick, el fiscal federal en el sur de Texas, me dijo que cada vez que aparecía un mensaje de “tolerancia cero”, los funcionarios del Departamento de Justicia le decían explícitamente que su distrito ya estaba haciendo mucho para combatir la inmigración ilegal y que podía ignorar la iniciativa.

Una y otra vez, Gene Hamilton ignoró o rechazó todo lo que sugiriera que la ejecución de una política que separara a los niños de sus padres crearía problemas morales, legales o logísticos. Cuando pregunté a un colega cercano de Hamilton en el Departamento de Justicia por qué Hamilton era tan persistente en promover la política, hizo una suposición basada en su propia experiencia: “Stephen Miller le dijo que lo hiciera”. Agregó: “Stephen Miller generalmente decía a las personas que, si intentaban trabajar a través del sistema, verían un retroceso... por lo que era realmente importante que esa persona simplemente sorteara el sistema y lo hiciera por sí misma y eludiera la cadena”.

“Para Stephen y Gene”, me dijo, “cualquier cosa que se estancara era evidencia del fracaso del sistema”, no de alguna debilidad en sus ideas políticas.

Más allá de los expertos reales, el Washington oficial tiene muy poco conocimiento de cómo funciona el sistema de inmigración. (La inmigración “destruye tu carrera”, me dijo Lauren Tomlinson, asistente principal de comunicaciones del DHS. “No puedes resolverlo. Todo lo que vas a hacer es hacer enojar a todo el mundo”). Aun así, en retrospectiva, es sorprendente cuántas personas en todo el gobierno federal participaron en conversaciones sobre una política que causaría separaciones de familias de forma prolongada aparentemente sin darse cuenta.

Esta ignorancia ambiental permitió a los Hawks engañar a los Careerists y hacer que ciertos hechos parecieran más benignos de lo que eran. Kirstjen Nielsen y los miembros de su círculo íntimo me dijeron que recordaban escuchar constantemente la frase “Hicimos esto antes” en referencia a procesar judicialmente a los padres y separarlos de sus hijos; Kevin McAleenan y Tom Homan y sus respectivos equipos repetían esa frase incesantemente. Nielsen, Scott Lloyd y otros dijeron que entendían que esto significaba que los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza de administraciones anteriores habían hecho lo mismo.

Cuando escuché por primera vez este argumento de uno de los asesores de Nielsen, supuse que se había equivocado o que yo había oído mal. Parecía absurdo que él no supiera que separar a los niños de sus padres no era algo que se hubiera hecho en una escala significativa. Pero luego lo escuché de nuevo de Nielsen y su personal superior. Algunos de ellos me dijeron que recordaban haber escuchado ciertas estadísticas: que el 10 o el 15 % de los padres habían sido remitidos para procesamiento judicial en el pasado. Otros dijeron que los detalles nunca estuvieron claros, o que la Casa Blanca o el Departamento de Justicia afirmaban que no guardaban datos al respecto. Estos funcionarios dijeron que creían que la idea que Nielsen estaba debatiendo no era nada nuevo. “Parecía un tema sin importancia al que no debería dedicar tiempo”, recordó May Davis, quien ocupó varios cargos en la Casa Blanca de Trump.

Cuando decía a estos funcionarios, incluyendo a Nielsen, que rara vez se había procesado judicialmente a los padres que viajaban con un niño en el pasado, parecían sorprendidos. Aquellos que supuestamente dieron estas garantías sobre la política, incluyendo a Homan, McAleenan y Ron Vitiello, el subcomisionado interino de CBP, negaron haberlo hecho; algunos sugirieron que el secretario del DHS y sus asesores simplemente debían estar confundidos.

Kevin McAleenan, uno de los principales subalternos de Kirstjen Nielsen, la presionó para que autorizara la separación familiar. Más tarde fue designado secretario interino de Seguridad Nacional. (Mark Wilson / Getty)

La presión implacable de los Hawks de la Casa Blanca parecía estar desgastando a Kevin McAleenan. Se formaron caravanas de solicitantes de asilo de América Central que se dirigían a los Estados Unidos, y la cobertura de ellos las 24 horas provocó un nuevo nivel de pánico en la administración sobre los cruces fronterizos. Después de debatir la idea durante meses, McAleenan dio su paso más directo para impulsar el procesamiento judicial de los padres, sabiendo que la Patrulla Fronteriza los separaría de sus hijos. En un correo electrónico del 19 de abril de 2018 a Tom Homan y Francis Cissna, director de los Servicios de Ciudadanía e Inmigración de EE. UU., declaró su intención de recomendar formalmente la idea a Nielsen.

“Consulte un borrador del memorando de decisión que propone un mayor procesamiento judicial (hacia el 100 %) de todos los adultos que cruzan ilegalmente, ya sea que se presenten como adultos solteros o en grupos familiares”, escribió McAleenan. “Creo que este enfoque tendría el mayor impacto en los números crecientes, que siguen siendo motivo de gran preocupación”. Dijo que planeaba enviar el memorando a Nielsen al cierre del día siguiente, y agregó que incluso sin su apoyo, “estoy preparado para presentarlo solo”.

Homan y Cissna decidieron unirse. McAleenan ahora dice que el correo electrónico fue solo una “pequeña imagen” de un proceso burocrático más grande en el que solo estaba siguiendo instrucciones.

Nielsen recibió el memo con irritación, con la sensación de que estaba siendo exprimida por sus propios subordinados. Se adjuntó un análisis legal de John Mitnick, el principal abogado del DHS, quien descubrió que “aunque sería legalmente permisible separar a adultos y menores como se describe anteriormente, cualquier decisión de este tipo enfrentará desafíos legales”. Advirtió que un tribunal podría determinar que las separaciones familiares a gran escala, sin ningún mecanismo probado para la reunificación rápida después del proceso judicial, violaban “varias leyes o la cláusula del debido proceso de la Quinta Enmienda”. (Aunque el análisis de Mitnick está escrito con imparcialidad legal, un miembro del personal de la Casa Blanca que asistió a una reunión sobre la Tolerancia Cero con él en abril dijo que estaba “espantado” por los riesgos de litigio asociados con la política).

Nielsen me dijo que apoyaba la idea de procesar judicialmente a todos los que cruzaron la frontera de forma ilegal, incluidos los padres que viajaban con sus hijos, pero temía que el DHS no estuviera logísticamente preparado para implementar la política sin causar caos en los tribunales y centros de detención, y perder la pista de padres e hijos. Le pidió a la Casa Blanca que le permitiera aplazar su decisión sobre el programa durante seis meses para poder viajar ella misma a Centroamérica y anunciar que la política era inminente, con la esperanza de que al hacerlo alentaría a las familias que necesitaban buscar asilo a utilizar los puertos legales de entrada. Stephen Miller no estaba dispuesto a esperar. Nielsen me dijo que afirmó estar en contacto con funcionarios de la Patrulla Fronteriza que estaban ansiosos por comenzar. Con él, dijo Nielsen, “el tono siempre es frenético. ‘El cielo se está cayendo, el mundo se está acabando, todo será culpa tuya. El presidente prometió esto, y tenemos que cumplir la promesa’”.

“La Casa Blanca estaba cada vez más frustrada” con los retrasos, me dijo un asesor de Nielsen. “Básicamente dijeron: ‘Mira, el fiscal general te dio una orden legal. Tienes que ejecutarla’”. Esto no era cierto. “Y seguimos retrocediendo. Eventualmente, la presión llegó a ser simplemente abrumadora”. McAleenan y Homan decían: “Estamos listos para empezar. Estamos listos para empezar. Estamos listos para empezar. Lo tenemos en funcionamiento. Tenemos un buen ritmo de batalla con DOJ. Nosotros podemos hacer esto”.

No se había alertado de lo que se avecinaba a ninguna de las otras agencias que se verían afectadas por la Tolerancia Cero. Eso incluyó al Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos. “No sé cómo decir esto con delicadeza, así que solo lo diré: Realmente no es como si la opinión del HHS importara aquí”, me dijo John Zadrozny, ya que debido a que el HHS no tenía ninguna autoridad sobre la política de inmigración, no era raro que el departamento quedara fuera de dichas discusiones. Zadrozny dijo que, aunque no recordaba una decisión específica de mantener en secreto la política de Tolerancia Cero del HHS, no le sorprendería si hubiera una. “Hubo momentos en los que teníamos reuniones en las que decíamos específicamente: ‘Mantengan al HHS fuera de esto; solo van a balbucear y causar problemas. Ellos en realidad no van a ser útiles’”.

Por sorprendente que parezca, parece que nadie en el departamento que se encargaría de cuidar a miles de niños separados recibió una advertencia oficial de que el programa de Tolerancia Cero estaba a la vista. “No encontramos evidencia de que el liderazgo del DOJ haya debatido con el HHS sobre la política de tolerancia cero o las separaciones de familias antes del anuncio”, concluyó más tarde el informe del inspector general.

A fines de abril, se produjeron varios desarrollos casi a la vez. La oficina de Gene Hamilton preguntó a los cinco fiscales estadounidenses que habían sido asignados a los distritos fronterizos del suroeste si su personal había visto un aumento en las remisiones para procesamiento judicial de los padres que viajaban con niños según el memorando de abril de Sessions y, de no ser así, cuándo esperaban hacerlo. Se escribió el correo electrónico como si los abogados deberían haber sabido que se aproximaba un cambio, pero su respuesta dejó en claro que, de hecho, este era el primer aviso que habían recibido de que cambiaría el trato a las familias. Los abogados emitieron una respuesta conjunta en la que indicaban que ninguno de los cinco distritos tenía los recursos para manejar el mayor volumen de casos que crearía el proceso judicial de los padres. “Este cambio en la política provocaría remisiones nuevas de 20 a 400 casos por día, según el distrito”, escribieron los fiscales estadounidenses. Además, Seguridad Nacional y Patrulla Fronteriza no podrían procesar estos casos lo suficientemente rápido. “El examen médico de tuberculosis, varicela, sarampión; mucho menos el procesamiento de estas personas para establecer su identidad, extranjería, antecedentes penales o migratorios, etc., sería prácticamente imposible de lograr dentro de los plazos constitucionalmente exigidos”. Más tarde, Hamilton le diría al inspector general que se había “perdido” la respuesta de los fiscales estadounidenses, que era la que había solicitado, y que no sabía que los fiscales estadounidenses habían planteado estas preocupaciones específicas sobre el proceso judicial de los padres.

Rich Hunter, el segundo funcionario de más alto rango en el Servicio de Alguaciles de EE. UU. en el sur de Texas, escuchó lo que ocurriría de un colega que había sido informado por un amigo en el Departamento de Justicia. Los alguaciles son responsables de albergar a los detenidos en prisión preventiva que enfrentan cargos penales federales, incluidos los que cruzan la frontera, y de transportarlos a la corte para sus audiencias. Incluso en circunstancias normales, sus instalaciones a lo largo de la frontera están siempre llenas. Con la entrada de detenidos nuevos debido a la política de Tolerancia Cero, Hunter anticipó que el sistema colapsaría.

“Cuanta más y más información obtuvimos, se creaba un panorama cada vez más sombrío”, me dijo Hunter. “Pude ver el impacto que se dirigía por las vías directamente hacia nosotros, y nadie nos había avisado. Nadie nos había preparado para esto. Nadie nos había preguntado: ‘¿Tiene lugar para esto? ¿Tiene recursos, mano de obra?’”. Hunter ayudó a producir un informe que se entregó al Departamento de Justicia el 27 de abril. Afirmó que los alguaciles, al igual que los fiscales estadounidenses, no tenían los recursos para implementar la Tolerancia Cero. Los alguaciles enviaron copias del informe a la oficina de Jeff Sessions y a Rod Rosenstein, quien luego presionaría a los abogados del DOJ para que aplicaran la política de la manera más agresiva posible. Tanto Hamilton como Rosenstein le dijeron al inspector general del Departamento de Justicia que no estaban al tanto de ningún problema planteado por los alguaciles sobre la Tolerancia Cero, otra advertencia más que afirman haber pasado por alto.

Esa misma semana, el memorando de McAleenan que presionaba a Nielsen para activar la Tolerancia Cero se filtró a The Washington Post y se publicó un artículo al respecto el 26 de abril. Hasta el día de hoy, no está claro si quienes apoyaban la Tolerancia Cero o quienes se oponían filtraron el memorando. Muchos especularon que los opositores al programa lo habían filtrado para generar una respuesta negativa popular y hacer que la implementación de la política fuera menos probable. Pero si ese es el caso, el plan fracasó. Después de que apareció el artículo del Post, la presión sobre Nielsen para autorizar la Tolerancia Cero solo aumentó. “Parecía que Kirstjen estaba sentada entre todos estos memorandos y no haría nada”, recordó Lauren Tomlinson.

A principios de mayo, Miller convocó otra reunión más sobre la Tolerancia Cero, en la Sala de Situaciones. Nielsen dice que comenzó a enumerar todas las razones por las que el departamento no estaba listo para avanzar. “Primero, Stephen dijo: ‘Tuvimos esta reunión un millón de veces, ¿quién piensa que necesitamos más tiempo a pesar de todo eso?’” Me dijo Nielsen. Levantó la mano, la única persona en la habitación que lo hizo. “El seguimiento de Stephen fue: ‘Está bien, ¿quién piensa que solo tenemos que avanzar? Terminamos de hablar de esto’. Y en ese momento, recuerdo lo que sentí como un mar de manos”.

Según notas que preparó, Hamilton reconoció que se enviarían los niños separados al HHS. Para cualquiera que esté familiarizado con las operaciones del HHS, esto habría indicado de inmediato que el gobierno enfrentaría barreras significativas al tratar de reunir a padres e hijos; entre ellas, los niños y los padres estarían separados por cientos de millas debido a la forma en que las ubicaciones del HHS funcionan y muchos padres no reunirían los requisitos para recuperar la custodia de sus propios hijos según los requisitos para patrocinar a un niño oficialmente considerado menor no acompañado. Pero nadie con tal conocimiento estaba en la habitación.

El 1 de mayo, McAleenan le envió un correo electrónico a Hamilton y le dijo: “Es probable que la semana que viene”, para que la Patrulla Fronteriza comience a remitir a los padres para el procesamiento judicial. Tres días después, McAleenan fue a ver a Nielsen con su borrador del memorando en la mano para que ella lo firmara. Se produjo una acalorada conversación, según Nielsen y varias personas que la escucharon.

Nielsen me dijo que McAleenan presentó los argumentos habituales: no se le puede decir a la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza que no haga cumplir la ley; no puede eximir a los padres del proceso judicial; el presidente quiere esto. “Pero le había dicho a Kevin: ‘No puedes implementar la Tolerancia Cero hasta que esté convencido de que tenemos los recursos’”. Nielsen dijo que pensó que “en la mente de Kevin, estaba retrasando lo que les habían dicho que hicieran, básicamente según la ley. Y estoy segura de que Stephen los llamaba a todos cinco veces al día diciendo: ‘¿Por qué no estás haciendo esto?’ Y los sindicatos [de la Patrulla Fronteriza y el ICE] se estaban volviendo locos porque querían que sucediera”.

Nielsen me dijo que quería ser “el tipo de líder que se remite a los expertos y las trayectorias profesionales”, que usa abreviaturas para referirse a aquellos, como McAleenan y Homan, que habían pasado años trabajando en sus agencias e insistían en que tenían los recursos necesarios para implementar la política sin problemas. Tampoco podía permitirse el lujo de ser vista como la única con ideas moderadas que estaba ganando tiempo. “El DHS es un departamento de 250.000 personas, así que para mí fingir que sé más que los demás, me pareció lo opuesto al tipo de líder que quería ser”, me dijo Nielsen. “Entonces, sí, en última instancia, le tomé la palabra a Kevin”, dijo, y agregó que McAleenan exigió: “¿Por qué no me crees y por qué no crees en las trayectorias profesionales? Saben lo que están haciendo”. (McAleenan negó haber presionado a Nielsen en su propio nombre. Dijo que transmitió las directivas que estaba recibiendo de la Casa Blanca y otros).

Según me dijo Nielsen, la discusión habría continuado, pero tuvo que irse a otra reunión. “Yo estaba así: ‘Está bien, te creo’”. Ella firmó la Tolerancia Cero. “Francamente”, me dijo: “ojalá no lo hubiera hecho”.

En la tarde del 7 de mayo en la frontera de San Diego y con vista al Pacífico, Jeff Sessions realizó una conferencia de prensa. Con Tom Homan a su lado, anunció que la Tolerancia Cero entraría en vigor como política nacional. Kirstjen Nielsen y otro personal del DHS dicen que no les informaron sobre la conferencia de prensa hasta unas horas antes, cuando un portavoz del Departamento de Justicia compartió un borrador de los comentarios de Sessions. Cuando lo leyeron, el personal de Nielsen pidió que se eliminara una línea, con la esperanza de poder pedirle a la Patrulla Fronteriza que pospusiera la aplicación de la política a las familias hasta que pudieran prepararse: “Si está contrabandeando a un niño, lo procesaremos y lo separaremos de ese niño como lo exige la ley”. El personal de Sessions se negó; dijeron que esa era nuestra “frase ganadora”, según Border Wars, un libro de Julie Hirschfeld Davis y Michael D. Shear.

John Kelly me dijo que, durante la conferencia de prensa televisada, Nielsen irrumpió en su oficina en el ala oeste: Estaba indignada. Le preocupaba que un aumento repentino y dramático de los procesamientos judiciales pudiera causar caos en la frontera. “Nielsen decía: ‘No estamos listos para hacer esto. No tenemos las instalaciones. No tenemos la capacitación’”.

Tenía razón, me dijo Kelly. “Fue un desastre, como se predijo”.

Después de meses de advertencias desatendidas e informes no leídos, la separación masiva de familias estaba a punto de comenzar. Aunque muchos argumentaron que la política nació de la malicia, quienes la observaron de cerca dicen que vieron algo más sutil, pero no menos insidioso entre Homan y McAleenan y otros que impulsaron la política.

“Estaban tratando de hacer su trabajo”, me dijo Elizabeth Neumann, subjefa de personal de Nielsen. “Y estaban absolutamente desconcertados acerca de cómo detener el avance” de inmigrantes que cruzan la frontera. “Y creo que les faltaba un filtro realmente importante para decir ‘Hay una línea que no podemos cruzar’”.

Hizo una pausa y luego lo expresó de otra manera: “Si el presidente sugiriera, ‘Deberíamos tener fosos con caimanes y tal vez dispararle a la gente desde la frontera, y eso sería una forma de disuasión’, creo que la mayoría de los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza dirían: ‘Oye, esa es una línea roja que nunca cruzaremos’. Todos conocemos las líneas de color rojo brillante.

“Simplemente estaban contra la pared y ya no podían ver la línea roja”.

Implementación

(Mayo–junio de 2018)

La implementación de la Tolerancia Cero fue un desastre. Durante 48 días, ocurrieron una serie de catástrofes. Después de dos semanas y media, las autoridades de la Patrulla Fronteriza finalmente les pidieron a los agentes que registraran qué niños pertenecían a qué padres. Los correos electrónicos internos muestran que, cuando un juez de primera instancia en el sur de Texas exigió que la Patrulla Fronteriza le proporcionara a la corte las listas semanales de niños apartados y sus ubicaciones, y amenazó con declarar a la agencia en desacato en caso de no hacerlo, los agentes entraron en pánico por su incapacidad para cumplir con una petición tan básica. “Yo podría ir a la cárcel”, le escribió un supervisor a un colega, quien respondió: “¡¡¡¡¡No voy a ir a la cárcel!!!!!”.

Algunos de los que hacen frente a las consecuencias de la Tolerancia Cero (los burócratas, los jueces, los trabajadores sociales, los fiscales de EE. UU. y los agentes de policía) presentaron advertencias o quejas a sus supervisores. Recibieron diferentes versiones de la misma respuesta: Esfuércense más.

Luego del anuncio de Jeff Sessions, los cinco fiscales de EE. UU. en la frontera suroeste solicitaron una reunión con Gene Hamilton. Cuatro días después, el 11 de mayo, mientras los fiscales se sentaban en la frontera a esperar a que comenzara una reunión telefónica, recibieron un correo electrónico en el que se les informaba que Hamilton no podría asistir. Los fiscales decidieron hablar entre ellos, mientras que un oficial de enlace del Departamento de Justicia los escuchó y tomó nota. Después, el oficial de enlace escribió un resumen de la llamada, que concluyó con lo siguiente: “GRAN PREOCUPACIÓN: ¿Qué ocurre con estos niños cuando se los separa de sus padres? Parece que el DHS, una vez que entrega al niño al HHS, queda en un segundo plano y no puede dar información. ¿Qué garantías tienen los niños?”.

Aparentemente, captó la atención de Sessions, quien, más tarde ese día, accedió a hablar con los fiscales por teléfono. Sus respuestas parecían desconectadas de la realidad. Había prometido asignar 35 fiscales más a los distritos fronterizos del suroeste para ayudar con la implementación, pero no podrían comenzar con esos trabajos durante meses. Varias de las notas de los fiscales sobre el registro de llamadas en las que Sessions articuló un objetivo central: “Debemos llevarnos a los niños”.

Poco después, se garantizó a los fiscales de EE. UU. que los padres y los niños se reencontrarían rápidamente después del proceso judicial. Con eso, siguieron adelante.

Los correos electrónicos internos muestran que algunos fiscales de EE. UU. que asistieron y se resistieron a procesar a los padres de conformidad con la Tolerancia Cero se enfrentaron a una reasignación, y los padres cuyos casos fueron rechazados fueron separados de sus hijos de todos modos. A principios de mayo, por ejemplo, funcionarios del DHS escucharon que los fiscales de Yuma, Arizona, se negaban a procesar los casos de Tolerancia Cero, salvo en los casos en los que los niños habían cruzado la frontera con ambos padres, para que al menos uno de los padres pudiera permanecer con ellos. Mientras los oficiales de la Patrulla Fronteriza se apresuraban a confirmar que este “problema” no estaba ocurriendo en otros lugares, uno de ellos advirtió que “habrá repercusiones” para los fiscales que rechazaron casos. Otro agregó que “la oficina del AG”, presumiblemente una referencia a Hamilton, les había asegurado que cualquier fiscal que se niegue a disolver unidades familiares “se irá a trabajar a otro distrito, lejos de la frontera suroeste”.

Hamilton hizo varios intentos a principios de mayo, después de que comenzara la Tolerancia Cero, para convocar reuniones entre los Departamentos de Salud y Servicios Humanos, Justicia y Seguridad Nacional, con la esperanza de lograr un acuerdo entre las tres agencias, con sus decenas de miles de empleados, pero ya era demasiado tarde. Sus correos electrónicos revelan tal ingenuidad sobre el sistema que no está claro si eran sinceros o fingidos. Por ejemplo, en un correo electrónico, propuso que los jefes de policía de EE. UU. usaran cárceles abandonadas para alojar a padres apartados de sus hijos, una idea que no prosperó porque habría tomado millones de dólares y meses de negociaciones de contratos para que tales instalaciones cumplan con el código federal. Al mismo tiempo, Hamilton se jactaba internamente de cuánto habían aumentado los procesamientos y, el 21 de mayo, le escribió a un colega que, aunque lo normal eran unos 2.700 procesamientos mensuales en los meses anteriores a la Tolerancia Cero, “ahora estamos por hacer al menos esa cantidad por semana”.

La brutalidad de la Tolerancia Cero fue inmediatamente evidente. El padre de un niño de 3 años “perdió a su h—”, dijo un agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza a The Washington Post. “Tuvieron que sacar al niño de sus brazos por la fuerza”. El hombre estaba tan enfadado que tuvieron que llevarlo a una cárcel local. “Gritó y pateó las ventanillas durante el viaje”, contó el agente. A la mañana siguiente, se encontró al padre muerto en su celda; se había estrangulado con su propia ropa.

La afluencia de padres angustiados a los centros de detención del gobierno en todo el país convirtió las instalaciones en ollas de presión, donde los detenidos y los empleados de los centros correccionales estaban al límite. Incluso durante la temporada más concurrida en la frontera, una única dependencia de los jefes de policía de los EE. UU. normalmente se encargaría de solo unas pocas docenas de ingestas diarias. Ahora, de repente, se les pedía que encontraran alojamiento para cientos de nuevos detenidos cada día.

Los supervisores de los jefes de policía ordenaron que las camas literas se colocaran temporalmente en dormitorios para que los padres apartados de sus hijos tuvieran un lugar para dormir. “Ya no contamos con mano de obra”, un jefe de policía en el Distrito Sur de California le escribió por correo electrónico al personal a mediados de mayo. “Estamos en ‘crisis’, ‘masa crítica’ ‘DEFCON 1’, o como quiera llamarlo”.

Además, los jefes de policía recibían llamadas urgentes del personal del refugio que trabajaba bajo la Oficina de Reasentamiento de Refugiados, quienes estaban empleando cualquier método posible para localizar a los padres apartados de sus hijos, para satisfacer así los requisitos de que los niños bajo custodia federal tengan la oportunidad de hablar con sus familiares o patrocinadores dos veces por semana. Según el inspector general del DOJ, algunos de los jefes de policía nunca habían oído hablar de la ORR y tuvieron que buscar información en la Internet. Muchos jefes de policía se negaron a pasarles las llamadas a los padres, alegando que estaban demasiado ocupados o que no estaban obligados a hacerlo.

Rich Hunter, el oficial de alto rango de los jefes de policía en Texas que había anticipado el caos, viajó desde su oficina en Houston a la corte federal en McAllen para tratar de resolver los problemas. Llegó y vio que la calle fuera de la corte estaba llena de autobuses chárter que se habían conseguido en el último minuto para transportar la ola de padres apartados de sus hijos a la corte. Debido a que la corte no tenía suficientes bloques de celdas, los padres tuvieron que permanecer dentro de los autobuses estacionados durante horas hasta que les llegara el turno para presentarse ante el juez. La sala en sí se parecía a una sala de conciertos repleta. Hunter me dijo que el reportero de la corte “estaba apiñado en la esquina”. “Los fiscales están de pie junto al estrado del jurado, donde hay más acusados. No era una imagen de un tribunal federal que hubiera visto antes”.

Como un veterano con 30 años en la agencia, Hunter dijo que su primera preocupación era la seguridad. Pero también encontró la escena emocionalmente perturbadora. “Recuerdo sus caras”, dijo Hunter. “Si se trata este tema el tiempo que sea necesario, uno se da cuenta de que la abrumadora mayoría de la gente no son miembros del cartel… Los oiría pidiendo a sus fiscales defensores, a cualquier persona, información [sobre sus niños]. Como padre, como persona, te afectaría, porque puedes imaginarte cómo fue”.

Recordó que los padres tenían dificultades para usar los auriculares de interpretación de la corte. “Muchos de ellos no habían visto tecnología como esa antes en su vida y se los ponían mal”, dijo. “Y luego la mirada en sus rostros de ¿qué está pasando? ”.

Neris González, empleada consular salvadoreña encargada de proteger los derechos de los migrantes de su país bajo custodia de EE. UU., estaba estacionada en un centro de procesamiento de la CBP en McAllen cuando leyó sobre la Tolerancia Cero. “En mi mente pequeña”, me dijo, “pensé que la familia, la iban a separar”, poniendo a los padres en una celda y a los niños en otra. “Nunca pensé que iban a arrebatar sus hijos”.

Pero, cuando entró en el centro de procesamiento por primera vez, después de que se implementó la Tolerancia Cero, vio un mar de niños y padres, gritando, acercándose unos a otros y luchando contra los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza que los estaban separando. Los niños se aferraban a cualquier parte de sus padres que pudieran: brazos, camisas, pantalones. “Al final, el agente lo jalaba fuerte y se quitaba al niño”, dijo. “Era horrible eso. No eran ningún animalitos [por los que luchaban], eran niños humanos”.

Además de Wesley Farris, el oficial de la Patrulla Fronteriza que habló con Frontline, González parece ser el único oficial que ha hecho constar las separaciones. (Pedí a los miembros de la administración de Biden que permitieran que les realice una entrevista a los oficiales de la Patrulla Fronteriza que habían participado en la implementación de la Tolerancia Cero. Me respondieron que nadie querría hablar conmigo.). González dijo que efectivamente la instalación se mantuvo cerrada durante la implementación de la Tolerancia Cero. No pudo entrar casi ninguna persona que no fuera parte de la Patrulla Fronteriza o el ICE, mientras que, en el pasado, periodistas, representantes de organizaciones religiosas y abogados de derechos humanos habían tenido permiso para entrar en ocasiones. “No era correcto”, manifestó. “No querían que les publicaran lo que estaban haciendo”.

González le preguntó a un agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza qué estaba pasando. “Dijo que el ICE y la BP obedecían órdenes de Trump, y este solicitó que separaran a los niños de sus padres, por completo”. Se veían situaciones de desesperación por todas partes. Los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza que estaban sacando a los niños le pidieron a González que los ayudara a prevenir peleas. En varios momentos, ella se interpuso entre padres y agentes, con la intención de calmar a las familias. González dijo que, en el apogeo de la implementación de la Tolerancia Cero, cerca de 300 niños fueron apartados cada día en sus instalaciones y hacinados en recintos con rejas. Pasó la mayor parte de su tiempo dentro de los recintos, ayudando a los niños a llamar a sus familiares. A veces, los niños más pequeños no parecían entender completamente lo que estaba pasando.

González dice que el sonido en las instalaciones era escalofriante: los gritos de los niños formaron un viento ululante y penetrante. El sonido empeoraba cuando llegaba el momento de que se fuera al final del día. “Me agarraban, me apretaban, me abrazaban, para yo no podía salir”.

La escena le recordó a la guerra en El Salvador, donde miles de niños desaparecieron, y era difícil escapar del sonido de los llantos de sus madres.

Si bien la Tolerancia Cero estaba vigente, Kirstjen Nielsen la defendió ante el Congreso y en los medios de comunicación usando el mismo lenguaje clínico que se había usado para convencerla de que la política era razonable. Ella y su equipo argumentaron que algunas de las familias apartadas de sus niños eran, en realidad, parte de planes de trata en los que se secuestraba o buscaba parejas adultas al azar a los niños con el fin de que ambas partes tuviesen libre paso a los Estados Unidos. (Varios funcionarios de la administración de Trump estipularon que hablarían conmigo para este artículo solo si accedía a mencionar a las “familias falsas” en mi historia. Existen casos de esas familias falsas, pero ha habido muchos ejemplos en las investigaciones posteriores sobre la separación de las familias. En la demanda colectiva federal sobre la separación familiar, el gobierno indicó que sospechaba que solo existía un pequeño número de familias falsas. Y Michelle Brané, quien dirige el Grupo de Trabajo de Reunificación Familiar de la administración de Biden, recientemente me aseguró que el grupo no había encontrado un solo caso falso de tráfico familiar).

Otro argumento de Nielsen sigue siendo popular hoy entre los veteranos de la administración de Trump: que separar a los niños migrantes de sus padres para fines de enjuiciamiento no era diferente de lo que sucede en los procedimientos penales estadounidenses cada día. “Si un padre estadounidense es detenido por conducir ebrio, y su hijo está en el asiento trasero”, dice este argumento, “el niño no va a la cárcel con él o ella”.

Pero, a medida que los fiscales de EE. UU., quienes son posiblemente las más altas autoridades en este tema, fueron entendiendo lo que les estaba sucediendo a las familias después de que los padres apartados abandonaran la sala, no estuvieron en absoluto de acuerdo con esta evaluación. Por lo general, los padres estadounidenses que son arrestados en los Estados Unidos tienen acceso a un sistema para recuperar a sus hijos cuando son liberados de la custodia. Según una fuente, John Bash, el fiscal de EE. UU. nombrado por Trump en El Paso, testificó recientemente en un tribunal federal que se horrorizó al descubrir, en junio de 2018, que en los pocos días que le tomó a su oficina terminar de procesar a los padres, sus hijos ya estaban siendo enviados tan lejos como Nueva York, sin ningún sistema para reunirlos. “Fue algo así como: ‘¡¿Me estás diciendo que no podemos ubicar a los niños y que están en otro estado?!’ ”, supuestamente dijo Bash.

Bash y otros fiscales de EE. UU. quedaron atónitos por la ineptitud de quienes habían creado la política. “Recuerdo que pensé: ¿Por qué nadie tiene ni siquiera un archivo de Excel? ”, supuestamente dijo Bash. “Quiero decir, es una gran población en términos de costo humano, pero no es una gran población en términos de gestión de datos. Estamos hablando de miles de familias. Puedes tener todo eso en una hoja de cálculo con los nombres de las personas, a dónde va el niño. Era una locura. Recuerdo que me dijeron que iba a haber un número de teléfono al que los padres podrían llamar y saber dónde estaban sus hijos. Y le dije eso a una defensora pública, quien me dijo: ‘Primero, este número de teléfono no funciona. Y, segundo, la mayoría de los padres no tienen acceso a teléfonos donde están detenidos, o tienen que pagar para usar un teléfono público. Por lo que eso no funciona’ ”.

Bash le pidió al Departamento de Justicia que iniciara una investigación sobre por qué no se estaba reuniendo a los padres y niños rápidamente. Aún no comprendía completamente el papel de su agencia en el esquema. Creó una lista de preguntas que quería que respondieran, que compartió con Gene Hamilton, Rod Rosenstein y otras personas en el DOJ: “¿Qué tecnología podría usarse para garantizar que los padres no les pierdan el rastro a sus niños?” “¿Es cierto que, a menudo, se los separa físicamente?” “¿Por qué el HHS no devuelve a los niños a sus padres tan pronto como estos salen del sistema de justicia penal, ya que en ese momento los niños dejan de ser menores ‘no acompañados’?”. Rosenstein respondió que los fiscales de EE. UU. deberían tratar de averiguar lo que estaba pasando por sí mismos. Los fiscales enviaron las preguntas a sus homólogos de la Patrulla Fronteriza, pero estos ignoraron sus preguntas. “El DHS acaba de cerrar sus canales de comunicación con nosotros”, me dijo Ryan Patrick, el abogado de EE. UU. en el sur de Texas. “Los correos electrónicos quedarían sin respuesta, no se devolverían las llamadas, o ‘No estamos respondiendo esa pregunta en este momento’ ”.

Recientemente, los correos electrónicos internos de ese momento ayudaron a explicar lo que Bash, Patrick y los otros fiscales de EE. UU. no pudieron entender: por qué el plan para reunir a las familias era defectuoso hasta el punto de la negligencia. Dentro del DHS, los funcionarios estaban trabajando para evitar que las familias se reencuentren.

A los pocos días del inicio de la Tolerancia Cero, Matt Albence, uno de los diputados de Tom Homan en el ICE, expresó su preocupación de que, si los enjuiciamientos de los padres se hacían con demasiada rapidez, sus hijos seguirían esperando ser recogidos por el HHS en las estaciones de la Patrulla Fronteriza, y sería posible el reencuentro familiar. Lo vio como algo malo. Cuando Albence recibió informes de que se habían producido reencuentros en varios sectores de la Patrulla Fronteriza, inmediatamente intentó evitar que esto siga ocurriendo, y se puso en contacto directamente con, al menos, un sector, y les pidió ayuda a sus superiores: Tom Homan, Ron Vitiello y Kevin McAleenan. “No podemos permitir esto”, escribió a sus colegas, subrayando en una segunda nota que el reencuentro “obviamente socava todo el esfuerzo” detrás de la implementación de la Tolerancia Cero y haría quedar al DHS “completamente en ridículo”. Albence y otras personas propusieron “soluciones”, tales como poner a los padres cuyos enjuiciamientos eran especialmente rápidos en custodia del ICE o en “un centro de detención temporal alternativo” que no fuera la estación de la Patrulla Fronteriza donde sus hijos estaban detenidos. Esto parece haber ocurrido en algunos casos.

Albence también sugirió que la Patrulla Fronteriza entregue a los niños separados al HHS “rápidamente”, en lugar de esperar a que los contratistas federales los recojan, para minimizar la posibilidad de que sean devueltos a sus padres. “Confirmar que la expectativa es NO reunir a las familias ni liberarlas”, escribió Albence. (Albence se negó a hacer comentarios sobre este artículo).

La sede del DHS envió un correo electrónico el 25 de mayo manifestando que, siempre que fue posible, la agencia no tuvo más remedio que reunir a los niños con los padres que hayan cumplido con sus sentencias penales. Las respuestas dejaron claro que se trataba de información nueva y que no formaba parte del plan original. La mera acusación “no era exactamente una consecuencia que teníamos en mente”, escribió Sandi Goldhamer, un agente de largo tiempo y socia de Carla Provost, la jefa de la Patrulla Fronteriza en ese momento.

Aún sin saber que los funcionarios del DHS estaban trabajando para mantener a los padres e hijos separados, tanto Bash como Patrick comenzaron a idear estrategias para que se procese a los padres por cargos de delito menor, para cumplir con las órdenes de Sessions y que los padres ni siquiera así pudieran recuperar a sus hijos rápidamente: Patrick desarrolló un plan para transferir a algunos detenidos a tribunales menos sobrecargados en su distrito, más lejos de la frontera, para que se los pudiera procesar más rápido. Bash elaboró otro plan para llevar a cabo procesamientos por videoconferencia, para evitar que se separen las familias en primer lugar. Ninguna de las ideas llegó a prosperar.

Bash recientemente revisó las comunicaciones entre Albence y otras personas en el DHS, que se hicieron públicas el pasado junio como parte del caso judicial por el que Bash fue destituido. Él estaba indignado. Supuestamente, declaró que el sistema de justicia penal estadounidense de ninguna manera consideraría ético o legalmente permisible mantener a los niños alejados de sus padres con fines punitivos una vez completado el proceso legal. “No le haríamos eso ni a un asesino, y mucho menos a un padre que se enfrenta a cargos de delito menor como resultado de su intento de solicitar asilo”, dijo Bash.

En casos de la corte federal, varios padres cuyos hijos fueron llevados alegan haber sido burlados por agentes, quienes les dijeron: “¡Feliz Día de la Madre!”. Y los padres cuentan que les dijeron que darían a sus hijos en adopción o que nunca los volverían a ver. Otros cuentan que los amenazaban o ignoraban cuando preguntaban dónde estaban sus hijos. Tal vez, para evitar altercados físicos, algunos agentes comenzaron a engañar a las familias para separarlas, o a sacar a los niños de las celdas de detención mientras ellos y sus padres dormían. Bash informó a la sede del DOJ que dos demandantes en su distrito manifestaron que les habían dicho que estaban llevando a bañar a sus hijos, y luego nunca los volvieron a ver.

Las instalaciones de cuidado infantil del HHS evolucionaron rápidamente para satisfacer las nuevas demandas. Bethany Christian Services, que antes había atendido principalmente a niños de 12 años o más, tuvo que abrir un preescolar improvisado para hacer frente a la afluencia de niños apartados de sus familias que aún no habían dejado los pañales y que necesitaban tomar siestas. Los maestros de Bethany dejaron de intentar dar lecciones tradicionales y optaron, en su lugar, por pasar películas relajantes durante todo el día, con la esperanza de evitar un efecto dominó en el que el arrebato emocional de un niño podría desencadenar rápidamente una ola de lamentos en el aula.

“Lo que demostró fue que, de hecho, no queremos sus masas cansadas, pobres y hacinadas”, me dijo Hannah Orozco, supervisora de Bethany. “Queremos disuadirlos de venir aquí, y ese fue el mensaje que les dimos a los niños”.

Cuando todo el sistema de refugiados del HHS alcanzó su capacidad máxima, Bethany se resistió a las súplicas de expandir su programa, que consiste, principalmente, en hogares de acogida y algunos pequeños refugios que albergan solo hasta 36 niños a la vez, para garantizar que cada niño recibiera atención individualizada. Pero otras empresas aceptaron con entusiasmo contratos gubernamentales multimillonarios, para albergar a niños en enormes instalaciones, como un antiguo Walmart, que, en un momento, se usó para detener a más de 1.000 niños.

Hace mucho tiempo se han eliminado las instituciones a gran escala del sistema nacional de bienestar de la infancia porque se las considera traumáticas e inseguras. De hecho, muchos de esos centros para niños inmigrantes fueron objeto de muchas denuncias por abusos físicos y sexuales, y algunos han eludido los requisitos federales de verificación de antecedentes para evitar a los depredadores. Sin embargo, es donde terminaron la mayoría de los niños apartados de sus familias, en parte, porque la falta de planificación anticipada no dejó otra opción.

Algunos de los trabajadores sociales con contrato con el HHS lucharon con el dilema ético que presentaba la Tolerancia Cero. No están seguros de si, con su trabajo diario, estaban ayudando a los niños separados de sus familias o si estaban permitiendo el sistema que los había alejado de sus padres en un primer lugar. A mediados de junio, Antar Davidson dejó su trabajo en un gran refugio en Arizona y se llamó a sí mismo un “objetor de conciencia” a la Tolerancia Cero. Los niños en el refugio habían estado “corriendo por los pasillos, gritando, llorando por sus madres, tirando sillas”, dijo a MSNBC, lo que llevó a un “enfoque más duro y autoritario por parte del personal para intentar lidiar con el problema”.

El público en general tampoco sabía qué pensar del papel del HHS en la situación. Los reporteros y los manifestantes se presentaron fuera de las instalaciones de cuidado infantil del HHS, cuyas direcciones suelen estar muy vigiladas debido a la vulnerabilidad de sus clientes. El personal les puso máscaras de Halloween a los niños o les cubrió los rostros cuando estaban fuera para que no se los pudiera fotografiar. Una trabajadora social de Bethany en Michigan fue escupida en una gasolinera y acusada de secuestro.

Incluso los altos funcionarios de la administración de Trump estaban profundamente confundidos. Durante semanas, el equipo de comunicaciones de la Casa Blanca pidió al Departamento de Justicia que presentara fiscales que pudieran explicar la política a los medios, pero nadie en la sede del DOJ quería hacerlo. May Davis, la entonces coordinadora adjunta de políticas de la Casa Blanca, intentó explicar la situación a un grupo de altos funcionarios, incluyendo a Sarah Huckabee Sanders, la secretaria de prensa, que estaba siendo interrogada por los periodistas sobre la política. Sin embargo, Davis inadvertidamente sumó confusión cuando sugirió que padres e hijos se estaban reencontrando rápidamente. “Hice algunos diagramas de lo que pensé que estaba sucediendo”, me dijo Davis. “Por supuesto, lo que yo pensaba que estaba sucediendo era ‘que los separaban durante dos o tres días, mientras se presentaban ante un juez, y luego volvían a estar juntos’ ”.

En un momento dado, Claire Grady, ayudante de Nielsen, envió un correo electrónico a Rod Rosenstein, al Departamento de Justicia, para pedir ayuda: El HHS se había quedado sin espacio, por lo que más de 100 niños pequeños habían estado detenidos durante varios días en celdas de detención de la Patrulla Fronteriza. Rosenstein, que previamente había amonestado a la oficina de John Bash por negarse a procesar a los padres de niños muy pequeños (un cargo que Rosenstein objetó al inspector general del DOJ, aunque el hecho estaba explícitamente documentado), respondió preguntando si simplemente podía cambiarse el límite de tiempo de 72 horas para el traslado de los niños al HHS por su seguridad. Grady y Gene Hamilton tuvieron que explicarle a Rosenstein que el límite no era negociable; por mucho tiempo había sido dispuesto por ley. Finalmente, la cadena de correos electrónicos llegó a Jeff Sessions, quien respondió, aunque sin brindar ayuda: “Si la cuestión no se está resolviendo en ninguna agencia del DOJ, no dude en informármelo, y es posible que Rod o yo tengamos que llamarlos. Estamos en modo post atentados del 9/11. Todo es urgente”.

Junio de 2018: Una persona en Tornillo, Texas, protesta contra la política de Tolerancia Cero de la administración de Trump, que separó a las familias que intentaban cruzar sin autorización la frontera hacia los EE. UU. (Mike Blake / Reuters / Alamy)

Mientras tanto, la Oficina de Derechos Civiles y Libertades Civiles del DHS estaba siendo invadida por peticiones de ayuda de padres apartados en busca de sus hijos. Quienes solían presentar las solicitudes eran los empleados contratados nuevos. Cada vez que un empleado comenzaba a procesar una nueva denuncia, aparecía en la pantalla de su computadora una foto del niño tomada por la Patrulla Fronteriza. En algunas fotos, un niño muy pequeño parecía no darse cuenta de lo que estaba a punto de suceder y sonreía como si fuera una fotografía escolar. Las fotografías de niños mayores, que parecían tener una mejor comprensión de lo que estaba pasando, los mostraban con lágrimas o incluso gritando. Los empleados jóvenes en la oficina comenzaron a descomponerse en sus escritorios.

Los registros del gobierno indican que, al igual que con la Operación Streamline, la política de Tolerancia Cero comenzó a impedir que los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza y los fiscales federales se centraran en cuestiones de mayor importancia. La Patrulla Fronteriza “no está enfocándose en los acusados de delitos graves reales, como los agresores sexuales”, les escribió el oficial de enlace del DOJ para los fiscales de EE. UU. en un correo electrónico a sus colegas en Washington.

Ron Vitiello me comentó que el objetivo principal de la CBP durante la Tolerancia Cero era dar ánimo a los agentes, cuya moral estaba siendo socavada. “Se suponía que esto iba a ser un sufrimiento a corto plazo para obtener ganancias a largo plazo”, dijo Vitiello. “Estaba tratando de comunicarme con los trabajadores para decirles: ‘Esperamos ver una disminución en los números. Esto va a funcionar’ ”.

Pero, a medida que las partes individuales del sistema de aplicación de la ley de inmigración luchaban con sus propios problemas logísticos, empezó a salir a la luz una situación aún más horripilante. La política estaba tan rota (quizás intencionalmente), que no podía arreglarse.

Vitiello y otros en la sede de la CBP y del DHS dijeron que no estaban al tanto de las desgarradoras separaciones denunciadas por los medios. “Me sentiría mal si alguien fuera a ducharse, y al volver su hijo ya no estuviera. Soy un ser humano”, me dijo Vitiello. Él y otras personas dijeron que recordaban que el estado de ánimo empezaba a agriarse cuando parecía que el departamento había “perdido la narrativa” sobre la Tolerancia Cero ante la prensa. McAleenan ha dicho desde entonces que sentía que la política debía terminar porque la CBP estaba perdiendo la confianza del público, aunque él y otros también han expresado la creencia de que los periodistas exageraban en sus informes sobre las separaciones para que parezcan más atroces de lo que realmente eran.

Sin embargo, algunas personas en el DHS creyeron en los informes bien documentados que se leían en la prensa, muchos de los cuales involucraban filtraciones de trabajadores del gobierno. Elizabeth Neumann, subjefa de personal de Nielsen, recuerda que una funcionaria de carrera entró a su oficina y dijo: “No puedo creer que lo están haciendo. Es una crueldad”.

El 18 de junio, la niebla de la negación se disipó abruptamente cuando ProPublica publicó un audio filtrado de niños apartados de sus familias llorando por sus padres en una instalación del gobierno. Pone en duda las garantías oficiales de que se estaba separando a los niños de sus familias sin contratiempos y con humanidad. Además, deja claro que los objetivos de la política de Tolerancia Cero no eran los delincuentes, sino los niños.

Durante la grabación de siete minutos, un niño pequeño, con un sollozo bajo y tambaleante, repite una y otra vez: “Papá, papá”. “Quiero ir con mi tía”, les dice una niña a los agentes. Mientras gritaban, puede escucharse a un oficial de detención bromeando con los niños. “Tenemos una orquesta”, dijo. “Lo que nos falta es un director”.

Para ese momento, el gobierno de EE. UU. había separado de sus padres a más de 4.000 niños bajo la política de Tolerancia Cero y las iniciativas locales anteriores.

El fragmento del audio fue recogido por los medios de comunicación de todo el mundo. Los comentarios publicados en la versión del audio de ProPublica subida a YouTube muestran las noticias de la separación familiar que finalmente penetran en la conciencia del público.

Mientras lo escuchaba, lloré hasta que me dolió mucho el estómago.

Me rompe el corazón escuchar a estos niños inocentes llorando. Espero que se reencuentren pronto. Dios nos ayude.

Nunca he estado más avergonzado de los Estados Unidos.

Frente a una protesta abrumadora, incluso los aliados republicanos más acérrimos de la agenda de inmigración de Trump comenzaron a condenar la Tolerancia Cero, algunos de ellos de forma sincera, y otros, por razones políticas. “Todos los que estamos viendo imágenes de estos niños llorando, alejados de sus mamás y papás, estamos horrorizados”, dijo el senador Ted Cruz a los periodistas. “Debemos mantener a los niños con sus padres. Los niños necesitan a sus madres. Necesitan a sus padres”.

Un alto funcionario del HHS me dijo que le tomó semanas aceptar lo que estaba leyendo en las noticias, incluso que los oficiales de inmigración estaban presionando a los padres para que aceptaran que los deporten sin sus hijos. “Era algo tan horrible que a ninguna persona normal se le ocurriría que esto estaba sucediendo”, dijo el oficial.

Cuando la negación ya no era viable, la administración no perdió el tiempo buscando a alguien como chivo expiatorio.

“Era muy evidente que querían un chivo expiatorio”, me dijo Lauren Tomlinson, asistente de comunicaciones sénior del DHS. Cuando ProPublica publicó la grabación, Kirstjen Nielsen estaba en Luisiana para dar un discurso. En ese momento, ya había rechazado varios pedidos de Sarah Huckabee Sanders para que hable con la prensa desde el podio de la Casa Blanca.

Mientras todavía estaba en el avión de regreso a Washington, Nielsen fue convocada a la Casa Blanca por Sanders, quien, cuando llegó, le dijo que era la persona indicada de la administración para abordar la política, y que los intentos de Jeff Sessions para hacerlo solo habían empeorado la situación. (Días antes, el fiscal general había invocado a la religión para justificar la separación de las familias). Nielsen y su círculo íntimo se reunieron en el ala oeste con John Kelly, quien la instó fuertemente para que no diera la conferencia de prensa. “Le dije: ‘Mira, cualquiera que vaya por ahí va a poseer esto’”, me dijo Kelly. Nielsen me dijo que sentía que no tenía otra opción. Sus agentes estaban siendo atacados, y era su trabajo defenderlos.

Nielsen se sentó en la silla de maquillaje de la sala de prensa de la Casa Blanca, mientras que un ayudante, Jonathan Hoffman, la acribilló con posibles preguntas. Minutos después, caminó hacia el podio. Kevin McAleenan, quien había instado a Nielsen a aprobar la política y era oficialmente responsable de las acciones de la Patrulla Fronteriza, se paró a un lado, donde no podían tomarlo las cámaras de los canales noticias, y se quedó en silencio, y pasó desapercibido.

En la sede del DHS, el personal se reunió frente a los televisores. “Creo que, en ese momento, quedó muy claro para todos lo mal que estaba todo”, me comentó un alto funcionario del DHS. “Para algunas personas, esa fue la primera vez que realmente entendieron la gravedad de la situación”.

En el podio, Nielsen estaba a la defensiva, y eso hacía que los periodistas se pusieran nerviosos. Intentó diferenciar el hecho de separar a las familias y de procesar a los padres, pero ignoraba que, en la práctica, equivalía a lo mismo. Hizo hincapié en que los padres apartados de sus hijos estaban cometiendo el delito de cruzar la frontera ilegalmente, incluso para ejercer su derecho legal a solicitar asilo. Ella no reconoció que el DHS había estado limitando el acceso a los puertos oficiales de entrada a través de un proceso llamado “medición”, impidiendo efectivamente que las personas soliciten asilo sin violar la ley. Tampoco reconoció que además se separaron un número considerable de familias que pudieron cruzar por los puertos oficiales de entrada o que cruzaron por otro lado, pero que no estaban siendo procesados. Además, en repetidas ocasiones, culpó al Congreso por la política de Tolerancia Cero, y sugirió que no tuvo otra opción que hacer cumplir los estatutos que establecían que cruzar la frontera de forma no autorizada era un delito, lo que era mentira. Fuera de la Operación Streamline, se procesó a pocas personas en las décadas anteriores a la asunción de Donald Trump.

Para los espectadores que veían la conferencia de prensa, para quienes los gritos de súplica de los niños apartados todavía estaban frescos en su mente, el enfoque de Nielsen en los detalles técnicos parecía sorprendentemente insensible.

Cindy Madrid localizó a su hija, Ximena, quién en ese entonces tenía 6 años, solo después de reconocer su voz en un audio publicado por ProPublica, de niños separados llorando en instalaciones del gobierno. (Christopher Lee para The Atlantic)

Nielsen me dijo que, en el momento de la conferencia de prensa, ella no estaba familiarizada con los informes de los canales de noticias que indican que los bebés habían sido tomados de sus padres, ni que los miembros de la familia se estaban perdiendo en el laberinto de la detención federal, ni que se había deportado a los padres sin sus hijos, hecho que ocurrió más de 1.000 veces, según los registros federales. Esto es casi imposible de creer dada su reputación como alguien que estaba obsesivamente bien preparada e informada sobre la cobertura de los medios de comunicación de las operaciones de su departamento.

“Lo último que apoyaría o defendería es algún tipo de escena trágica en la que alguien está agarrando a un bebé de los brazos de alguien”, me dijo Nielsen. “Eso iría en contra de cada hueso y célula de mi cuerpo”.

Después de la conferencia de prensa, Nielsen salió de la Casa Blanca. Cuando se fue, la gente le dio palmaditas en el hombro como si estuvieran tocando un ataúd en un funeral por última vez.

Reencuentro

En el gobierno federal, los intentos inútiles por controlar los daños comenzaron la mañana siguiente. Fue “un desastre minuto a minuto”, me dijo un funcionario del Departamento de Justicia, mientras recordaba una reunión de ese día. “Se nos filtraba agua de todos lados”. El equipo de asuntos del Congreso del DOJ informó haber recibido muchas solicitudes oficiales de información del Capitolio, mientras que, Rod Rosenstein finalmente admitió no haber encontrado forma de resolver los problemas logísticos de la Tolerancia Cero. En la reunión, Sarah Isgur, portavoz principal del DOJ, dijo que la narrativa en torno a la política había sido tan mala que no había posibilidades de recuperarse. A medida que los informes por distrito (en principio, rigurosamente controlados) circulaban más y más en la sede, quedó claro que “había algunas historias injustas por ahí afuera”, me dijo el funcionario, “pero incluso las más justas eran malas. Y, sobre algunas con las que el reportero se había equivocado, los hechos eran, en realidad, peores”.

Los republicanos del Congreso comenzaron a pedir no solo el fin de las separaciones familiares, sino un proyecto de ley que las prohibiera en el futuro. Paul Ryan, portavoz de la Cámara, le dijo a John Kelly en una reunión durante el desayuno que, si el Congreso no prohibía las separaciones familiares, “perderemos la Cámara [en las elecciones de mitad de período de 2018]. Será el fin del Partido Republicano”. Kelly relató lo que sucedió en la reunión en una discusión con Stephen Miller y algunos funcionarios del DHS, según las notas contemporáneas de un miembro del personal de Nielsen que estaba presente. Miller argumentó que el programa debía continuar.

La Casa Blanca se apresuró a emitir un decreto, uno de los más confusos y absurdos de todos los redactados por la administración de Trump. Pedía que el Departamento de Justicia continúe con la política de “tolerancia cero” en los cruces fronterizos ilegales, pero, al mismo tiempo, que el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional mantenga la unidad familiar de los procesados. Este fue un decreto oxímoron: La Tolerancia Cero significaba separar a las familias.

“No tenía ningún sentido”, recordó May Davis.

Sin embargo, al día siguiente, el 20 de junio, Trump lo firmó. “Simplemente cedió”, me dijo uno de los Hawks. La administración indicó que las familias que cruzaran la frontera serían detenidas juntas en los centros de detención familiar del DHS durante sus procesos penales y de inmigración. Esto tampoco tenía sentido. Por un lado, el DHS contaba con unas 3.000 camas para la detención de familias. Si consideramos la cantidad de personas que cruzan la frontera, esas camas se habrían llenado en menos de dos semanas. Por otro lado, los casos de asilo tardan más de un año en resolverse, en promedio, y un decreto federal de consentimiento de larga data establece que las familias pueden permanecer detenidas durante un máximo de 20 días, debido al daño que la detención a largo plazo causa a los niños.

Durante una conferencia telefónica ese mismo día, Gene Hamilton dijo a los periodistas que la administración planeaba impugnar el decreto de consentimiento, y que, si el juez no aceptaba hacerlo, las separaciones familiares comenzarían de nuevo. “Está en las manos de la jueza [Dolly] Gee”, dijo, refiriéndose a la jueza del Distrito Central de California, quien se pronunciaría sobre la impugnación. “¿Podremos detener a familias extranjeras sin separarlas o no?”. Según Hamilton, el decreto de consentimiento “puso a este poder ejecutivo en una posición insostenible”, como si el límite de 20 días no hubiera estado vigente durante varios años y como si fuera la jueza, y no la administración de Trump, quien había cambiado las cosas con la política de Tolerancia Cero.

Para finales de junio, ya no se hacían nuevas separaciones. Sin embargo, todavía no está claro qué sucederá con los, aproximadamente, 3.000 niños separados que permanecen bajo custodia del gobierno, por no hablar de los que fueron liberados y entregados a un patrocinador en los Estados Unidos, pero que todavía no se han reencontrado con sus padres. Poco después de que se emitiera el decreto, un portavoz del HHS les comentó a los periodistas que las familias separadas no se reencontrarían de inmediato, porque los padres estaban detenidos por cargos penales o de inmigración. Un segundo portavoz del HHS de la misma agencia agregó más tarde ese día que el primero se había equivocado, y explicó: “Todavía es demasiado pronto, estamos esperando más orientación sobre el asunto”, pero “el reencuentro es siempre el objetivo final”.

Recién en el apogeo de la política de Tolerancia Cero, Alex Azar, quien era el secretario de Salud y Servicios Humanos y, por lo tanto, el supervisor del sistema encargado de albergar a los niños apartados de sus familias, comenzó a entender el papel de su agencia en lo que estaba sucediendo, según su personal. (Azar se negó a hacer comentarios sobre esta historia). Azar, exabogado corporativo y ejecutivo farmacéutico, fue nombrado después de que el primer secretario del HHS de la administración, Tom Price, fuera destituido en medio de un escándalo. Se le pidió que revisara las regulaciones federales sobre el precio de los medicamentos recetados, y persiguió su objetivo con un enfoque riguroso. Azar estaba tan obsesionado con la eficiencia que los empleados del HHS no podían ponerse en contacto con él directamente, para que no se distrajera. Su dirección de correo electrónico era un secreto bien guardado. El jefe de personal y el subjefe de personal de Azar enviaban todas las preguntas internas a su oficina, y delegaban todo lo que no fuera de suma importancia para Azar. Esto incluye todos los asuntos relacionados con la inmigración.

Azar no conocía ni se preocupaba mucho por la política de inmigración cuando se unió a la administración. No pensaba que fuera un problema, porque le parecía que era solo una fracción del trabajo del HHS. Se le entregó toda la cartera de inmigración al subsecretario de Azar, Eric Hargan. Los colegas dicen que no se tomó en serio a Hargan, quien, con frecuencia, se ausentaba de la oficina, no parecía totalmente comprometido en las reuniones y no tenía dominio de los detalles de la política en sus áreas de responsabilidad, como la inmigración. Hargan se negó a hacer comentarios, por lo que no pude confirmar si tenía conocimiento de la política de Tolerancia Cero antes de que se anunciara, pero Azar y otros cercanos a él insistieron en que los había sorprendido por completo. Aunque Nielsen y otros en el DHS dijeron que se le advirtió a Azar acerca de la futura implementación de la política, reconocieron que, tal vez, nadie “lo sacudió por los hombros” para explicarle exactamente lo que significaba. Las personas cercanas a Azar dicen que, si hubiera estado involucrado en alguna conversación sobre una política de enjuiciamiento que pareciera inocua, no se habría percatado. No tenía ni idea de que el enjuiciamiento implicaría separar a los niños de sus padres, y mucho menos que fueran su responsabilidad como parte del grupo más grande de menores no acompañados en EE. UU., cuyo cuidado se encomendó al HHS.

Lucinda y su hijo Gabriel, fotografiados en julio. Fueron separados durante casi tres meses, cuando él tenía 5 años, después de que llegaron a los EE. UU. provenientes de Honduras. (Juan Diego Reyes para The Atlantic; Gobierno de los EE. UU.)

Algunos de los empleados de Azar me comentaron que, una vez que él realmente comprendió lo que implicaba la política de Tolerancia Cero, se enfureció. Pero en ningún momento, al parecer, él u otros funcionarios del Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos se manifestaron en contra de separar a los niños de sus familias antes de que la política se implementara en todo el país. Sí, los funcionarios del HHS habían sido excluidos de la conversación por los Hawks de la Casa Blanca, pero no lo habían notado, admiten libremente, porque no habían estado prestando atención. Esto es particularmente evidente en el caso de Azar. Tenía una relación cercana con Ivanka Trump y Jared Kushner, que Azar aprovechó para evitar que Miller lo contactara directamente. Si Azar hubiera estado en sintonía con lo que la Tolerancia Cero significaría, la podría haber evitado o reformado.

Las noticias hicieron que la conexión de su agencia con la crisis fuera innegable. La oficina de Azar se enteró por los productores de Rachel Maddow que, en su programa MSNBC, se diría que, durante la vigencia de la política de Tolerancia Cero, mientras su agencia estaba construyendo una ciudad de tiendas en el desierto de Texas para albergar a la gran cantidad de niños apartados de sus familias que estaban bajo su custodia, Azar había asistido a su reunión del Dartmouth College. Azar exigió que Scott Lloyd, de la Oficina de Reasentamiento de Refugiados, localizara de inmediato a los padres de los niños acogidos por el HHS. Cuando Lloyd fue a la oficina de Azar a la mañana siguiente para decir que los padres estaban bajo custodia del ICE, Azar comenzó a gritar: quería las ubicaciones exactas de todos los padres. Todavía no entendía que esa información no existía.

Azar dejó a un lado a Lloyd pensando que era un inútil y nombró a Bob Kadlec, asistente del secretario de preparación y respuesta de la agencia, para que se hiciera cargo de la tarea de volver a contactar a padres e hijos. Kadlec, un médico, había pasado dos décadas en Operaciones Especiales de la Fuerza Aérea y la CIA, donde sirvió en cinco despliegues, antes de su traslado al HHS. Aunque había asesorado a republicanos en el Congreso y en la Casa Blanca durante la administración de George W. Bush, se considera independiente.

Reconoció inmediatamente que no sabía casi nada sobre la ley de inmigración o el sistema de albergues que el HHS supervisó, e hizo algo que los responsables de la política de Tolerancia Cero aún no habían hecho: recurrió a la burocracia en busca de ayuda. Pidió a su personal que identificara expertos en la agencia que pudieran darle información. Poco después, Jonathan White estaba en su oficina. (White se había enfurecido tanto con Scott Lloyd que había renunciado a la ORR y había sido trasladado a un departamento diferente dentro del HHS. Además de rechazar las súplicas de White por una intervención sobre la separación familiar, Lloyd también había tratado de evitar que las niñas no acompañadas y en el cuidado de la ORR abortaran, usando una hoja de cálculo con datos como su último ciclo menstrual. “Estábamos en una caída libre de derechos humanos”, recordó White). Después de una conversación de media hora, Kadlec anunció que White se haría cargo de toda la operación.

Para White, la cita se sintió como una oportunidad para redimirse por su fracaso para detener las separaciones familiares. Una semana después, Lloyd todavía no había cumplido con otra de las peticiones de Azar: hacer una lista de niños potencialmente separados. Azar le dijo a su personal que preparara café y ordenara pizzas; nadie se iba a casa. Cerca de una docena de miembros del círculo íntimo de Azar se sentaron en el centro de mando del secretario frente a las computadoras, mientras que Jallyn Sualog, una funcionaria del HHS que había estado trabajando con White para oponerse a la separación de familias, les enseñó a usar un portal en línea para revisar cada detalle disponible sobre cada niño en su cuidado.

En ese momento, el Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos estaba albergando a unos 12.000 niños, la mayoría de los cuales habían llegado a los Estados Unidos solos. Esa era la población para la que se había creado el sistema de albergues de este departamento. Tendrían que revisar esos registros para averiguar qué niños (casi una cuarta parte del total) habían llegado a la frontera con, al menos, uno de sus padres, y luego habían sido separados.

Empleados federales tomaron fotografías para los archivos policiales de niños que fueron arrebatados de sus familias. Estas fotografías son reimpresas con permiso de los padres de los niños y representantes legales. (Gobierno federal de los EE. UU.)

Las fotos tomadas en los refugios de la ORR, similares a las fotos policiales que habían hecho que los empleados de la Oficina de Derechos Civiles y Libertades Civiles del DHS lloren en sus escritorios, ahora llenaron las pantallas de las computadoras de Kadlec y sus colegas. Cuando me reuní con Kadlec hace poco, lloró cuando me dijo que las fotos que vio esa noche aún lo atormentaban. “La primera era una niña sonriendo. Otro era un niño llorando. Otra era una adolescente que parecía con miedo”, dijo. “Se podía ver que lo que estaba sucediendo era devastador para estos niños… Algunos de ellos eran bebés. Algunos tenían 1 y 2 años, 5 años, 10 años”.

Recordó el “increíble silencio” que se hizo en la habitación donde él y el resto del equipo de trabajo estaban trabajando. “El equipo después la pasó mal. Tuve que tomarme algunas licencias prolongadas debido al trauma emocional”.

Esa noche fue la primera vez que los funcionarios del HHS tuvieron que enfrentarse a los rostros de los niños separados de sus familias, algo que muchos de los responsables de la política nunca han tenido que hacer.

Correos electrónicos internos revelan que los funcionarios de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas, que estaba asumiendo la custodia de los padres apartados de sus hijos después del cumplimiento de sus procedimientos penales, estaban decididos a impedir que el grupo de trabajo del HHS reuniera a las familias, salvo que fuera para deportarlos. “Querrán saber qué puede hacerse para facilitar la reunificación inmediata”, dijo Matt Albence, quien pronto se convertiría en el director adjunto del ICE, a sus colegas en un correo electrónico. “Les dije que eso no iba a pasar, a menos que el Departamento nos indique que lo hagamos”.

Con la sensación de que la reunificación no estaba cerca, Lee Gelernt de la ACLU pidió la intervención del juez en su caso contra el gobierno. La mayoría de los niños separados de sus padres, salvo los entregados a otros familiares en los Estados Unidos, seguían bajo la custodia del HHS. En su mayoría, los padres apartados de sus hijos que aún no habían sido deportados estaban cumpliendo una condena por su entrada ilegal, y estaban bajo la custodia de la Oficina de Prisiones o detenidos por el ICE. Muchos padres todavía no sabían dónde estaban sus hijos, y viceversa. (Una mujer, Cindy Madrid, pudo localizar a su hija de 6 años, Ximena, recién después de reconocer la voz de la niña en el audio publicado por ProPublica, que fue reproducido durante una transmisión de noticias que se proyectó en el centro de detención del sur de Texas, donde Madrid estaba detenida).

El 26 de junio, la jueza Dana Sabraw del Distrito Sur de California respondió a la petición de Gelernt y ordenó que el gobierno devuelva a los niños menores de 5 años a sus padres en un plazo de dos semanas, y que el resto de los niños se reencuentre con sus familias en un plazo de 30 días. El asesor legal de Alex Azar le advirtió que podría ser detenido por desacato al tribunal si el gobierno no cumplía con éxito, lo que, en teoría, significaba que Azar podría ir a la cárcel.

Kadlec y White, quienes dirigían el grupo de trabajo del HHS, buscaron a algunos representantes selectos del ICE y CBP para ayudar con esta tarea. “Tuvimos que elegir a esas personas cuidadosamente para que estuvieran dispuestas a compartir información”, me dijo Kadlec, anticipándose a que no todos en las agencias de orden público estarían dispuestos a colaborar.

“Los líderes del ICE no querían que tuviéramos éxito”, aseguró White. “Querían sabotear el esfuerzo de reunificación”. Según White, la posición inicial de Tom Homan como jefe del HHS era que las familias debían reencontrarse solo “en la línea de vuelo en Phoenix”. Es decir, que no quería devolver ningún niño a sus padres, salvo que se garantizara su deportación inmediata. Sin embargo, no había manera de resolver las solicitudes de asilo de todos (muchas finalmente tuvieron éxito) antes de la fecha límite de la jueza Sabraw, por lo que White solicitó que se designen cuatro instalaciones de procesamiento del DHS para que funcionen como sitios de reunificación. Incluso entonces, dice White, los líderes del ICE comenzaron a inventar excusas para explicar por qué necesitaban más tiempo. Los correos electrónicos muestran que a algunos niños se les dijo que iban a reencontrarse con sus padres y luego se los llevó a lugares de reunificación a horas de distancia, solo para decirles, al llegar, que el ICE quería seguir entrevistando a sus padres antes de liberarlos, o que sus padres ni siquiera habían llegado allí todavía. (Homan niega haber intentado retrasar las reunificaciones familiares).

“Estaban tratando de demorarlo”, aseguró White. Se dirigió al personal del HHS: “Si no cumplimos con la fecha límite del juez, no hay nada que podamos usar para presionar a la administración para que esto suceda. ¿Lo entienden? Entonces, esos niños estarán esperando, se deportará a sus padres, y posiblemente queden separados por el resto de sus vidas”.

White les dijo a sus colegas que organizaran los vehículos y vuelos que necesitaban para trasladar a miles de niños por todo el país en cuestión de días. “Esto es lo que vamos a hacer: una vez que tengan luz verde, llevan a esos niños a la puerta del ICE. Los dejan fuera de la puerta. Les llevaremos a los niños y los obligaremos a hacer las reunificaciones, o todo el mundo verá a los niños a su alrededor… Lleven aperitivos, lleven mantas. Asediaré al ICE con niños hasta que los reúnan con sus familias como se les exige”.

Mientras los funcionarios de los Departamentos de Seguridad Nacional, Justicia y Salud y Servicios Humanos se preparaban para las audiencias del Congreso, los asistentes de comunicaciones del DHS Jonathan Hoffman y Katie Waldman se presentaron en el HHS para tener una sesión de la “junta de homicidios” para preparar a Jonathan White y a otros para que respondan preguntas. Rápidamente, estallaron las discusiones, ya que White y Judy Stecker, un funcionario de asuntos públicos en el HHS, sintieron que White estaba siendo presionado para sugerir, con precisión, en el estrado de los testigos que el HHS había recibido notificación previa sobre la Tolerancia Cero. Stecker le pidió respaldo a Brian Stimson, el abogado principal del HHS que trabaja en litigios sobre separaciones familiares. Según los asistentes, Stimson le dijo a Hoffman “vete a la mierda” y lo llamó “idiota”. (Hoffman lo niega).

Después, Waldman apartó a White y lo llamó liberal humanitario. White se despachó contra ella, temblando y poniéndose colorado. “Es difícil mantener el equilibrio emocional cuando se trata de separación familiar”, me dijo. “No acepto que un objetivo de inmigración, por importante que sea para la gente, se logre con el alto precio” de separar a las familias. “¿Entiendes que no son niños hipotéticos? Son niños reales… Son tan reales como mis hijos”.

Las consecuencias

El 1 de agosto, una semana después de la fecha límite de la corte, más de 500 niños separados de sus familias permanecían bajo custodia federal. Muchos otros habían sido liberados y entregados a patrocinadores en los EE. UU., pero aún no se habían reencontrado con el padre o madre con quien habían cruzado la frontera. El gobierno todavía no ha hecho ningún esfuerzo por ponerse en contacto con los padres deportados sin sus hijos. La jueza Sabraw calificó el progreso del gobierno como “simplemente inaceptable”, y agregó que “por cada padre que no se reencuentre habrá un niño huérfano para siempre. Y eso es 100 % responsabilidad de la administración”.

Luego, se sumaron niños separados de sus padres a la demanda colectiva de Lee Gelernt. Hasta el momento, el número total de separaciones conocidas entre enero de 2017 y junio de 2018 es de más de 4.000. Después de entrar en la Casa Blanca, el presidente Joe Biden firmó un decreto que constituye el Grupo de Trabajo de Reunificación Familiar, encabezado por Michelle Brané, para continuar rastreando y reuniendo a las 1.500 familias que permanecieron separadas cuando su administración asumió el cargo. Al menos 360 padres se han reencontrado con sus hijos. A los que fueron deportados después de su separación se les permitió regresar a los Estados Unidos y se les concedió un período de libertad condicional temporal de tres años. No obstante, aproximadamente, 700 familias aún no se han reunido oficialmente, según las estimaciones más recientes del grupo de trabajo. Se presume que algunas familias se han reencontrado por su cuenta sin informarlo, por temor a interacciones adicionales con el gobierno de EE. UU.

Aunque destacadas organizaciones de bienestar infantil han descrito las separaciones familiares llevadas a cabo por la administración de Trump como “abuso infantil” y “tortura”, Gelernt evita usar ese lenguaje, porque cree que puede causar que la gente evada la situación aún más. Pero lucha con la realidad de que tanta gente parece haberlo superado. “El padre estadounidense promedio, cuando deja a su hijo por primera vez por una noche con una niñera, se preocupa cada minuto, o cuando deja a su hijo por primera vez en el preescolar se preocupa por lo que el niño está pasando, o por la primera vez que un maestro los trata injustamente”, dijo. “¿Realmente piensan que estas familias no sufren de la misma manera que ellos por perder a un hijo?”.

Su principal objetivo en este momento es presionar para que las familias separadas reciban un estatus legal permanente en los Estados Unidos, “algo que el Congreso podría hacer mañana”, dijo. Otros siguen defendiendo la ley que Paul Ryan solicitó, que hace ilegal separar a los niños de sus padres con fines disuasorios. Ambos esfuerzos quedaron truncos.

El efecto duradero de la separación familiar es innegable. Cheryl Aguilar, una terapeuta de Washington, D.C., que ha tratado a más de 40 familias que habían sido separadas anteriormente, dijo que los niños todavía están mostrando comportamientos regresivos, como mojar la cama y notable inmadurez, además de pesadillas, reexperimentación del hecho traumático, retraimiento grave y desapego de sus seres queridos. La recuperación “lleva mucho tiempo cuando ese tipo de trauma ocurre en una etapa de desarrollo tan importante”, me dijo. “Impactó el ‘cableado’ de su cerebro para que esté preparado para esperar que sucedan experiencias aterradoras como esa en el futuro. Son hiperconscientes y están hipervigilantes a los peligros, algunos de los cuales son reales, y otros, percibidos”. Aguilar lleva a cabo un grupo de apoyo para padres separados, que también luchan con depresión y ansiedad graves; algunos se sienten rechazados por sus hijos, muchos de los cuales creen que sus padres los abandonaron o entregaron voluntariamente. “Estamos tratando de dar a los niños y a sus familias herramientas básicas para volver a conectarse y comenzar a procesarlo”, contó.

Distintos estudios analizaron el efecto de la separación en las familias migrantes. En abril, Physicians for Human Rights publicó un informe basado en evaluaciones clínicas de 13 padres que fueron apartados de sus hijos. Todos tenían algún tipo de enfermedad mental relacionada con la separación; 11 de ellos tenían trastorno de estrés postraumático. Anne Elizabeth Sidamon-Eristoff, ahora estudiante de medicina en Yale y quien dirigió otro estudio, señaló que, en la investigación en animales usada para evaluar el riesgo de enfermedad mental, la separación de los ratones de sus madres, se usa como una especie de estrategia de referencia para modelar el estrés en los seres humanos. “Lo primero que pensé fue: eso es lo que nuestro gobierno le está haciendo a los niños”, me dijo.

“Estos estudios reafirman lo que la ciencia ha estado diciendo todo el tiempo” sobre cuál sería el impacto de un programa como “Tolerancia Cero”, me dijo Sidamon-Eristoff. “Y, honestamente, es bastante frustrante para mí que incluso tengamos que recopilar estos datos para intentar probar algo que siempre hemos sabido: la separación familiar es mala para los niños”.

Mirian y su hijo, originarios de Honduras, fueron separados bajo custodia en los EE. UU. cuando él tenía 18 meses de edad, poco tiempo después de haberse presentado para solicitar asilo. En una declaración jurada ante el tribunal federal, Mirian dijo que, como su hijo era tan pequeño, los agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza la obligaron a llevarlo ella misma a un auto, asegurarlo en una silla infantil, y vio cómo cerraban la puerta y se marchaban. (Christopher Lee para The Atlantic)

Los trabajadores de primera línea obligados a hacer cumplir la política de Tolerancia Cero contra su voluntad también lo han pasado mal. El verano pasado visité a Nora Núñez, quien ya no trabaja como defensora pública. Me invitó a su sala de estar, donde las luces estaban apagadas. Estaba de ánimo caído. Un reportero del Washington Post la había contactado recientemente para hablar sobre una madre apartada de su hijo, a quien Núñez había representado en la corte. Le había mostrado a Núñez una foto del reencuentro de la madre y la hija cuatro años después de su separación. Los brazos de la niña estaban flojos a su lado, mientras su madre la abrazaba llorando. “Se notaba que la niña estaba traumada. Su madre la estaba abrazando, y se podía ver que su cara y sus ojos parecían como vacíos”, me dijo. Su boca temblaba. “No se veía ninguna emoción normal de felicidad por el reencuentro”.

Núñez dijo que sintió asco al recordar haber apresurado en el proceso de sus acusaciones porque creía que eso los llevaría de vuelta a sus hijos más rápidamente, sin darse cuenta de que el gobierno tenía otros planes.

“No estoy segura de si puedo seguir mucho más con esto en este momento”, dijo después un rato y, finalmente, me pidió que me fuera.

Mientras la administración de Trump buscaba calmar la ira por la política de Tolerancia Cero, los funcionarios de la Casa Blanca propusieron culpar a las familias separadas por lo que les había sucedido. Un grupo de trabajo encargado del control de daños elaboró documentos sobre lo ocurrido, los cuales sugieren, sin pruebas, que la mayoría de los niños apartados de sus familias eran víctimas de la trata, según dos personas que estuvieron presentes. En una reunión, uno de estos funcionarios me dijo: “Dijeron: ‘¿Y si mostramos a estas mujeres arrojando a sus hijos contra la pared para que luego la gente piense: ¿Cómo pudieron hacerlo? ’ ”.

Durante el resto de su presidencia, Trump presionó para relanzar las separaciones familiares. “La discusión al respecto nunca terminó”, me dijo Kirstjen Nielsen, mientras recordaba una serie de conversaciones que tuvieron lugar en la Casa Blanca y en el Marine One. “Empecé a decir: ‘Señor, realmente, no podemos restablecerlo. Nada ha cambiado. Todavía no tenemos los recursos. Sucederá lo mismo. El sistema no se arregló’ ”. Dice que amenazó con renunciar y pidió el apoyo de la primera dama, Melania Trump, quien desalentaba a su esposo cuando este despotricaba para “volver a activarlo”, por lo general, mientras veía Fox News.

A Nielsen la habían persuadido para firmar la política de Tolerancia Cero personas que minimizaron sus implicaciones u ocultaron sus objetivos, pero el propio presidente no se molestó en hablar con eufemismo. Trump “dijo literalmente: ‘separación familiar’”, recordó un alto funcionario del DHS. “Stephen Miller siempre fue muy cauteloso y diría algo como ‘restituir la Tolerancia Cero’. Pero el propio Trump lo dijo abiertamente”. (No pudimos comunicarnos con Trump para pedirle que haga comentarios).

El funcionario continuó: “El nivel de descripción visceral que el Presidente dio asustaría a Nielsen, porque ella estaba como: ‘Estoy aquí tratando de explicar que esto no es lo que la administración pretendía hacer’, y el presidente habla como si realmente lo fuera”.

Nielsen dijo que intentó enmarcar la separación como algo que dañaría las perspectivas de reelección del presidente, pero la estrategia no funcionó, porque Miller decía que creía que sucedería lo contrario. Ella le dijo a Trump que tendría que escribir otro decreto para reinstaurar la Tolerancia Cero, ya que sabía que él nunca aceptaría retractarse públicamente, porque eso lo haría parecer débil. Algunas veces, Nielsen llamó a Alex Azar para pedirle que la respaldara. Azar también le dijo que renunciaría si se restablecía la política.

A medida que pasó el tiempo, Trump se enfureció aún más por la cantidad de personas que cruzaron la frontera y propuso ideas cada vez más extravagantes para evitar que sucediera, muchas de ellas plasmadas en las notas del alto funcionario del DHS: Una vez, el presidente “ordenó a Kelly que le dijera a Nielson que los ‘rodeara y los empujara de vuelta hacia México. ¿A quién le importa la ley?’ ”, dice un fragmento. “Se hizo un silencio”.

La relación de Nielsen con el presidente nunca se recuperó; se le pidió que renunciara en la primavera de 2019. Trump nombró a Kevin McAleenan para que la reemplace temporalmente. Durante su mandato, el DHS y sus subagencias llevaron a cabo otras tácticas controvertidas dirigidas a las familias, como realizar redadas en hogares con niños y detenerlos junto con sus padres con el fin de deportarlos, algo que el ICE históricamente intentó evitar. Trump se negó a designarlo oficialmente para el puesto. Con el tiempo, él también renunció.

“En mi opinión, la persona que no recibió suficiente atención pública y a la que no se la responsabilizó lo suficiente fue a Kevin McAleenan”, me dijo un abogado que trabaja para uno de los comités del Congreso que investigó las separaciones familiares. Esta idea fue repetida por muchos de los más cercanos a la Tolerancia Cero, que criticaron a McAleenan por insistir, en público y en privado, en que él era simplemente un espectador. En una entrevista con Chuck Todd de MSNBC, en el apogeo de la política, cuando se le preguntó quién había ordenado implementar la política de Tolerancia Cero, McAleenan invocó el memorando de Tolerancia Cero de Sessions, sin mencionar que su propio memorando había sido el catalizador que activó la política, o que había instado, en reiteradas ocasiones, a Nielsen a que lo firmara. “Kevin sabía todo lo que estaba pasando, insistió, lo apoyó y fue la clave para la implementación”, agregó el abogado. Después del fin de la Tolerancia Cero, McAleenan dijo públicamente que sentía que había sido un error. “La política estaba mal, punto. Desde el principio”, me dijo. “Nunca debería haber sido llevada a cabo por un departamento a cargo del cumplimiento de la ley, incluso con los duros desafíos que tenemos en la frontera”.

Ron Vitiello, quien se convirtió en el director interino del ICE en junio de 2018, también reconoció las deficiencias de la política, y se emocionó en algunas de nuestras entrevistas. “Podríamos haber hecho mejor la logística”, me dijo Vitiello. “El mensaje no fue correcto. Nos precipitamos hacia este fracaso, básicamente… Por supuesto, a uno le gustaría volver el tiempo atrás, pero no era una política tan cruel y sin corazón como lo terminó siendo. Pensamos que era una forma de resolver nuestro problema de la frontera, pero se nos fue de las manos”.

Nielsen dijo que decidió hablar conmigo para contarme esta historia “porque la situación de la frontera y la inmigración en este país es desgarradora y está empeorando”. Argumentó que corresponde al Congreso reformar nuestras leyes de inmigración de manera que permita a las personas que necesitan venir a los Estados Unidos hacerlo legalmente, y que las leyes se apliquen plenamente de forma humana. Con respecto a la Tolerancia Cero, Nielsen dijo que no se disculparía por hacer cumplir la política. Se hizo eco de un argumento que escuché con frecuencia de personas que entrevisté por esta historia: que ellos, o su agencia, habían sido injustamente culpados. “El HHS tenía a los hijos, el DOJ tenía al padre, nosotros no teníamos a ninguno”, me dijo Nielsen.

Pero ella desearía no haber aprobado la política, debido a sus profundos defectos. “Tomé la decisión sobre la base de algo que resultó ser información imprecisa”, me contó. Insistió en que había impedido que sucediera lo peor, porque nunca aprobó la propuesta de separación administrativa, que podría haber llevado a que miles de niños más fueran separados de sus padres.

Las personas que conocen a Miller dicen que él cree que la Tolerancia Cero salvó vidas, y que la aplicación de la ley de inmigración fue el logro más popular de Trump entre sus seguidores. Miller les ha dicho que la administración sentó las bases necesarias para que un futuro presidente implemente una aplicación estricta aún más rápido y con mayor alcance que durante el mandato de Trump.

Durante mis entrevistas, los Hawks argumentaron que la Tolerancia Cero había sido eficaz, o que lo habría sido si hubiera estado vigente solo un poco más. Esto sugiere que, si Trump o alguien que comparte sus puntos de vista sobre la inmigración fueran elegidos en 2024, las separaciones familiares muy probablemente se reanudarían.

Recientemente, hablé con Alejandro Mayorkas, secretario de Seguridad Nacional del presidente Biden, quien ha estado lidiando con otra afluencia de personas que cruzan la frontera, la mayoría de las cuales ahora vienen de lugares fuera de América Latina. Biden hizo campaña con la promesa de abordar las causas profundas de la migración a Estados Unidos desde América Central (la pobreza y la violencia), pero se ha avanzado poco en ese frente. En junio, 53 migrantes murieron intentando entrar al país en la parte trasera de un remolque, un incidente más mortífero que el que presenció Tom Homan en 2003.

A pesar de que tales eventos tienden a ser el resultado de la dura aplicación en la frontera, Mayorkas se ha enfrentado a las críticas de los republicanos por ser demasiado blando con la inmigración, en particular, respecto de las intenciones de la administración de Biden de flexibilizar el Título 42, una política de la era Trump vinculada a la pandemia del coronavirus que selló efectivamente la frontera. En respuesta, Mayorkas ha comenzado a buscar las mismas soluciones que llevaron a la Tolerancia Cero, usando la Patrulla Fronteriza para intensificar los enjuiciamientos y generar otras formas de “pagar las consecuencias”, aunque dice que esas herramientas solo deben desplegarse “junto con amplias protecciones humanitarias para las personas en busca de asilo”. La acción del Congreso sobre cuestiones fronterizas sigue estancada, y la política de inmigración queda directamente en manos del poder ejecutivo.

Mayorkas dijo que espera que los medios de comunicación ayuden a responsabilizar a los culpables de la separación familiar. Mientras que algunas estrategias de disuasión “posiblemente están dentro de los parámetros de nuestro sistema de valores”, dijo Mayorkas, la separación familiar estaba “muy fuera de los límites de lo que nosotros, como país civilizado y humano, podríamos tolerar”.

Cuando le pregunté a Mayorkas sobre una rendición de cuentas oficial del gobierno de los responsables de separar a las familias, dijo que estaba fuera de su alcance, en el DHS, y dependía del Departamento de Justicia. Sin embargo, el DOJ ha estado defendiendo la Tolerancia Cero (y a sus responsables) en la corte. En una audiencia reciente, insistió en que “nunca existió realmente una política de separación familiar. Lo que existía era la política de Tolerancia Cero que se inició en abril de 2018… Tenemos el testimonio de los testigos de la CBP y del ICE y de Hamilton, que se encontraba en el DHS en ese momento, de que estas políticas de separación, como dijeron los demandantes, nunca existieron, y nunca se promulgaron”.

Pero el juez no estaba convencido. “Este es un argumento constante por parte del gobierno”, dijo, y señaló que ni siquiera se procesó a los demandantes de ese caso en particular, los migrantes que fueron separados de sus hijos. (El Departamento de Justicia se negó a hacer comentarios sobre esta historia, pero ha dicho anteriormente que está dedicado “hacer justicia por las víctimas de esta política abominable”).

Una descripción exhaustiva de lo que sucedió durante la implementación de la política de Tolerancia Cero requeriría que el gobierno no solo mirara hacia adelante, hacia la revinculación de las familias, sino también hacia atrás, para ser totalmente transparente sobre el pasado. Es poco probable que esto suceda. “El DHS nos estaba mintiendo y no nos estaba dando los documentos”, me dijo el abogado que investigó la Tolerancia Cero para un comité del Congreso mientras Trump todavía estaba al mando. “Nos ocultaban muchas cosas, y yo los atrapaba con las manos en la masa y se los hacía notar, y decían: ‘Oh, bueno, volveremos y miraremos’, y fue una constante batalla espantosa”.

Muchos de los que estuvieron involucrados en el desarrollo de la política de Tolerancia Cero aún están trabajando en el DHS o sus subagencias. No obstante, Mayorkas dijo que sería demasiado difícil para él determinar “lo que sabían, lo que no sabían, lo que entendían, lo que no entendían”. Esa falta de rendición de cuentas de aquellos que participaron en la separación de las familias preocupa a algunas personas en el gobierno de que la práctica podría volver a implementarse bajo otra administración. “No hay un cuento con moraleja para evitar que esto vuelva a suceder”, dijo Jonathan White. Sin eso, me dijo: “Temo que vuelva a ocurrir”.

Si hay alguien con probabilidades de liderar otro esfuerzo para que el gobierno estadounidense separe familias, ese es Stephen Miller. Durante un año y medio intenté contactarlo para preguntarle directamente, entre otras cosas, por qué había presionado con tanta fuerza para que esto ocurriera en primer lugar, y si volvería a hacerlo en el futuro. Un amigo cercano de Miller y su esposa explicó que, desde que se convirtieron en padres, estaban completamente abocados al cuidado de los niños, y era difícil contactarlos.

A medida que mi fecha límite se acercaba, Miller me evadió o pospuso una conversación conmigo en reiteradas ocasiones. Una vez que llamé a Miller, me dijo rápidamente que tenía que irse y colgó. De inmediato envió un texto de seguimiento para explicar por qué había sido tan abrupto. “Estoy con la familia”, dijo. “Y nuestro pequeño”.

Caitlin Dickerson es escritora de The Atlantic.

‘You Cannot Host Guests Forever’

2022-05-03T06:00:00-04:00

Photographs by Marcus Glahn

On February 24, within hours of the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Karolina Lewestam and her husband, Jakub Fast, saw on social media that Ukrainians were arriving at bus and train stations in Warsaw with no idea where they would sleep.

Without even pausing to discuss it, the couple—a writer and a banker—jumped into group chats with neighbors whom they had never met and started plotting to exchange mattresses and other supplies, as they all rushed to prepare spare bedrooms and sofas. A few days later, at about 2 a.m., a van pulled up outside their historic home in an affluent neighborhood, and 10 people climbed out, including a 6-year-old boy carrying a stuffed cat. “I wanted to cry when I saw that,” Karolina recalled. “I just thought about what you choose to bring with you when you are packing in a hurry to run out of your home. That’s what he chose.”

In just a few months, Ukraine has become the epicenter of one of the largest human displacements in the world. As of late April, an estimated 7.7 million residents have relocated within the country and another 5.6 million have crossed international borders.* Most of those, at least for now, are in Poland. In a politically divided nation that is typically hostile toward refugees, hundreds of thousands of Polish people moved in astonishing unison following the Russian invasion, upending their lives in order to house, feed, and clothe traumatized Ukrainians. The display of generosity stood out from other mass-migration events I’ve covered.

But by the time I met Karolina and other Polish hosts, in late March, they were exhausted. They had missed work and lost sleep, and were stressed about the strain that caring for Ukrainians was putting on their dwindling bank accounts. (They were also wondering whether their own country would be Putin’s next target.) Many of them were ruminating over the same question—one they were gingerly trying to broach with their guests: When would they be leaving?

When I arrived in Poland, Nikita, the boy with the stuffed cat, and his mother, Irina Sytnik, who had worked as a taxi driver in Ukraine, were struggling. Nikita was waking up in the middle of the night calling out for his father, Ruslan, who had stayed in Ukraine to fight. Irina sobbed as she recalled the moment the bus carrying her and Nikita pulled away from Lviv while Ruslan waved goodbye to them, unsure whether they would see each other again. “We had no words in that moment,” she told me, through a translator.

Irina Sytnik and her son, Nikita, in the Warsaw home of the Polish family that has taken them in (Marcus Glahn for The Atlantic)

Nikita was also acting out—something he’d never done before the war—and had already been expelled from a private kindergarten for being too aggressive. Now the administrators of a second school said he was kicking and biting other children and asked that he be taken to a psychologist. “He’s frustrated because he can’t communicate with other people, because he doesn’t speak Polish,” Irina told me. “I feel the same way.”

Irina had challenges beyond just navigating the language barrier in a new country. The job she had found in Warsaw required a two-hour commute by bus and on foot that left her depleted at the end of each day. But under emergency legislation passed in the Polish Parliament after the war started, incoming Ukrainians must apply for a national identity number in order to access social services, a process that requires them to visit government offices, where hours-long queues form daily. One afternoon, while trying to complete the process, Irina and Nikita got lost, with only $10 remaining of the $300 they’d brought with them when they crossed the border. A police officer found them sitting on a public bench, both of them in tears, and gave them a ride back to Karolina’s house.

Ukrainians have been wedged into every corner of Warsaw—bunking not just in private homes, but in offices, sports stadiums, schools, nightclubs, and art galleries. Many of those I met had the same expression on their faces: eyebrows fixed halfway up their foreheads, as though still in disbelief about the events that had chased them from their homes and landed them here.

[In Focus: Ukrainian refugees say goodbye to home and family members]

Marina Konpakova, a single mother of three daughters, ages 5, 11, and 14, is staying in a spare room on the second floor of an opera house that’s part of the Palace of Culture and Science, a massive Stalinist building in the center of town. The family had hoped to remain in their apartment in Zaporizhzhia, three hours from the devastated port city of Mariupol. But when an airport nearby was bombed, the apartment shook, waking Marina in the middle of the night. Then the building managers turned off the electricity, to hide the fact that people were living there. This required everyone to walk down nine flights of stairs every few hours when air-raid sirens drove them to the basement, because they couldn’t use the elevator. Eventually, she gave up and packed a bag in the dark. On their way out of Ukraine, they passed scorched fields and homes that had been blasted apart by Russian ordnance.

Cramming themselves into an airless train car heading toward the Polish border, Marina’s daughters cried hysterically. “I think they were in shock,” she told me. When I visited their makeshift apartment, the 11-year-old stood silently in the bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror with her hands on her face. The 14-year-old sat wrapped in a comforter on a mattress on the floor, seemingly oblivious to my presence.

Marina was initially scared to come to Warsaw, “but now, half of my city is here,” she said. The theater employees who had set up the family’s accommodations had suggested that perhaps I would be able to figure out how long they planned to stay there. When I asked, Marina replied, “They said to stay as long as I need,” adding, “No one gave me a deadline.”

Agnieszka Kosowicz, the president of the board of the Polish Migration Forum, an NGO that helps foreigners integrate into Polish society, is concerned about the sustainability of the Polish response to Ukrainians. “There are hundreds of thousands of people that have invited refugees to their homes, and on the one hand this is all very optimistic and sounds good,” she told me, “but on the other hand I think it’s like sitting on a ticking bomb because, being a human being, you know that you cannot host guests forever.” Even if they had the will and the patience, some Poles simply don’t have the resources to sustain their initial levels of generosity. Magda Mlotkowska, who was housing 13 Ukrainians, told me that her family’s resources were thinning, with three boys of their own to care for. To help cover her bills, she was applying for a government program that provides about $9 a day for every refugee hosted.

Kosowicz is also concerned about nonwhite immigrants to Ukraine. When the exodus began, Kosowicz’s organization started receiving reports of such people being beaten or harassed as they attempted to flee the country and enter Poland. Numerous videos of these encounters have circulated on the internet. Some Polish university dorms and stadiums have rejected refugees without Ukrainian passports, as have volunteer buses transporting people to other European countries farther west. Some Polish households have declined to take in nonwhite immigrants who fled Ukraine, or asked guests to leave after discovering that they were not ethnically Ukrainian.

Left: The Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, where Marina Konpakova and her daughters are living in a spare room on the second floor. Right: Marina with her three daughters, ages 5, 11, and 14. (Marcus Glahn for The Atlantic)

Even as Poland is welcoming millions of Ukrainians, Kosowicz noted, it is simultaneously blocking Syrian and Iraqi refugees, who are also fleeing violent conflicts, from entering the country through Belarus. The Polish government has justified this on the grounds that the refugees’ presence in Belarus was orchestrated by that country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko. A close ally of Vladimir Putin, Lukashenko is seeking to provoke Poland’s right-wing government by facilitating the movement of Middle Eastern migrants across the border. Polish media had just reported on a 20-year-old paralyzed Kurdish man, who was being carried by his family to the Polish border. Some groups have been sprayed with water cannons. More than a dozen people have frozen to death in the forest that stretches across the two countries. “What happens there is totally inhuman,” Kosowicz said.

[Anne Applebaum: Belarus manufactured a migrant crisis on Europe’s doorstep]

Even though Kosowicz speaks English, I had brought along my Polish translator, because I had gathered from previous interviews that the disparate treatment of refugees in Poland was a sensitive subject. I thought it would be useful for my translator to learn about the issue from a fellow Pole before I pulled her into further reporting on the subject. The plan backfired.

As soon as we started discussing “third-country nationals”—immigrants to Ukraine who were living there when the war began—the temperature in the room seemed to rise. “Most of those people, they want to go to Germany or more west,” the translator said, interrupting the interview. “And Germans might come with their buses and take those people, but they don’t want to.” Kosowicz pointed out that Germany had sent significant aid to human-rights groups helping migrants who do manage to cross into Poland from Belarus.

Kosowicz reiterated her point about third-country nationals: “It’s great, all this enthusiasm and eagerness to help. But for everybody here who is not Ukrainian—for the Afghans, for the Iraqis, for the Syrians, for the people from Yemen, where there is a war right now—for them, it’s difficult.” The translator interrupted again. “Maybe it’s difficult,” she said, “but I just think that [Ukrainians] are so culturally close to us; they are like brothers to us. Sometimes it’s natural, yes?”

Kosowicz’s eyebrows arched toward the ceiling.

Later that week, when I visited a hostel that was set up for third-country nationals fleeing Ukraine, I decided to go alone.

The hostel for third-country nationals and other vulnerable groups, such as children traveling without adult guardians, is on the industrial outskirts of Warsaw, in a building typically used as a dorm for kids’ sports camps. Since the war began, the facility has hosted refugees originally from 34 different countries, packed four to a room in twin-size bunk beds. It is run by the Club of Catholic Intelligentsia, which was established during the 1950s, under Communism. In a country where the Church has in recent years lobbied for aggressive anti-abortion and anti-gay legislation, the club stands out for its progressiveness.

In the hostel, I met Yasemin, a Turkish woman whose story is a kind of cautionary tale of how forced migration can leave successive generations of a family feeling less and less rooted in any one culture or place with every additional move.

Yasemin (who asked that I not print her last name, because she worried that it could affect her future immigration prospects) said that her relatives and ancestors had landed in Turkey because of conflicts in Crimea, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, and other places. She said she was raised in a household that was out of step with the surrounding culture’s social and religious expectations for women. She and her family were tired of the pressure to conform and the feeling that they didn’t fit in.

When the war began, she and her 9-year-old son, Berkin, had been living in Ukraine for nine months, along with an elder daughter who was studying at a university there; they were trying to establish residency for the family based on Yasemin’s partial Ukrainian ancestry. With their plans now upended, she said she would try their luck in Brussels, where, as new immigrants who don’t speak the language, they would have to rebuild their lives from scratch. “We have a saying in Turkey,” she said: “ ‘Geography is destiny.’ ”

I also met Nduka Edike, a 52-year-old Nigerian man who had lived in Ukraine for nearly 25 years, after immigrating to Kyiv as a university student. When his father died, he said, he could no longer pay for his education and dropped out of school. But by then he was dating a Ukrainian woman, whom he went on to marry and have two children with, so he continued living in the country. He and his wife divorced, but they remain friends and have been in daily contact since the war began. In Ukraine, Nduka cut timber, did landscaping, and bought old shoes and refurbished them to be resold at an outdoor market. “I do any job,” he told me.

Left: Nduka Edike, a Nigerian man who has lived in Ukraine for nearly 25 years, at a hostel for third-country nationals on the outskirts of Warsaw. Right: Nduka’s travel documents are covered in boot prints and are partially ripped; he says he was assaulted by a Ukrainian officer just before he entered Poland. (Marcus Glahn for The Atlantic)

Nduka said Ukrainians would frequently spit on him on the bus or yell at him, saying things like “Why did you come here?” In 2006, during a rash of violent attacks by skinhead youth groups, he said he was stabbed several times and spent a month in the hospital, part of it in a coma. A friend was killed in the same incident, but he stayed in the country for his children, who he said would have better opportunities there than in Nigeria, parts of which are burdened by terrorism and violent crime.

When Russia invaded, Nduka headed for the Polish border on a bus, but he was stuck living in a humanitarian camp nearby for six days, and at least once was blocked from crossing the border, according to American and British volunteers who tried to help him. United Nations employees eventually obtained emergency travel documents showing that he had been living in Ukraine. But while he waited, Ukrainian migrants yelled racial slurs at him constantly, he and the volunteers said. One man pointed his cellphone camera at Nduka and yelled, “Look, they taught the monkey to speak Ukrainian.”

Finally, border guards in both countries approved his documents. But just as he was about to cross into Poland, he said, he was stopped again, this time by a Ukrainian officer who took the documents and tried to destroy them. He said the officer hit him and kicked him in the knee. Volunteers observing the incident ran to alert the UN, which sent employees to help. Hours later, around midnight, Nduka finally crossed into Poland, escorted by volunteers who gave him pain medication for his injuries.

Nduka said the UN employees had warned him that he would likely not be allowed to stay in Poland. (Emergency legislation allowing Ukrainian citizens to remain in the country for 18 months affords people of other nationalities fleeing Ukraine only 15 days.) Instead, he will try his chances in Germany, which is generally considered to be more welcoming to nonwhite refugees. He is planning to learn German, to add to the Yoruba, English, Ukrainian, and Russian he already speaks.

“It won’t be that bad,” he said. “What else can I do?”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which had only about 10 staff members in Poland at the start of the war, has staffed up rapidly to distribute emergency cash and other services to what has quickly become one of the largest populations of refugees in the world.

[Caitlin Dickerson: America never wanted the tired, poor, huddled masses]

Andreas Kirchhof, a spokesperson for the agency who is based in Jordan and has previously been deployed to Burundi, South Sudan, and Lebanon, among other places, told me that the generosity of Polish people toward Ukrainian refugees does have precedent in other parts of the world. Middle Eastern and African countries have taken in millions of refugees from places like Syria, Afghanistan, and the Central African Republic. But he cautioned that such responses don’t always last. “Over time, solidarity can diminish with some parts of the population.” At one point, a Polish taxi driver vented to me that she had no time to work, because she was helping a Ukrainian mother and three children who were staying with her get settled. “I have my life too,” she said.

“We know that our destinies are intertwined,” Karolina Lewestam had told me a few days earlier, speaking of the Ukrainians she has hosted. “There is a sense of companionship between the two nations when it comes to this journey toward freedom from Russia and its influence.” Several Polish hosts told me that they felt compelled to help Ukrainian refugees precisely because their presence was a reminder that Putin could threaten Poland next—that they, too, could soon be having to pack their bags to cross international borders. But by the end of my week in Warsaw, that abstract sense of solidarity seemed to be weakening in the face of practical challenges. After nearly a month, Irina was growing uncomfortable with the feeling that she was imposing on her host, and Karolina was weary from Nikita’s boundless energy, as well as her obligations to her own family and job.

After a day of work and kindergarten, Irina and Nikita commute back to the Warsaw home where they’re living.

Though Karolina’s husband had helped Irina find work cooking and cleaning in the cafeteria at the American School of Warsaw, a private English-language school that caters to the families of diplomats and international businesspeople, the position paid about $4 an hour, not enough to rent even a tiny apartment in Warsaw. It was not clear how long she and Nikita would remain living with the family. “She’s a working-class girl, so what can I do?” Karolina said.

Historically, the way a population treats refugees has frequently come down to whether citizens of the destination country see themselves in the newcomers, in terms of race, religion, class, or some other set of common affinities. Karolina had bonded more with the other refugees she’d taken in, Ukrainian professionals who have subsequently returned home or moved on to their own apartments.

As Karolina prepared for a dinner party for two of the Ukrainian women she had hosted earlier, I asked how she was doing. “I am weird,” she replied. “Everyone wants something from me, and I have nothing left to give.”

The group chat with her neighbors was still buzzing. “Mother with two children: daughter 18, son 10, looking for a place for 2/3 weeks,” one message said. “I think so, let me check,” another neighbor replied. It was like that constantly.

[Read: How can individual people most help Ukraine?]

If the patience of Polish citizens for their Ukrainian guests is wearing thin, refugees like Nduka and Yasemin never had access to those reserves of empathy in the first place. As someone who has covered refugee displacement in other places, I was struck by the contrast between Poland’s sudden and uncharacteristic embrace of Ukrainian refugees and the way most of the world’s displaced people—their numbers rising as a result of conflicts and climate change—are treated. Making my way around Warsaw, I frequently ran into volunteers from other countries, including the United States, who had dropped everything—some even quitting their jobs—to come and help Ukrainians. Though some presence of volunteers is typical during a migration crisis, their prevalence in Warsaw seemed far beyond the norm. This no doubt partly reflects the broader opposition to Putin’s incursions into democratic countries, as well as the fears about the conflict’s global implications, especially if it expands or escalates further. Even the casual use of the term refugee on the streets of Warsaw as a synonym for Ukrainian was noteworthy. In many places, displaced people are instead referred to as “illegal immigrants” or “economic migrants” by politicians and the media, which has been shown to affect how people think of them.

Ukrainians continue to arrive at the city’s busy train and bus stations daily, their eyes wide and teary from shock, their arms heavy with the weight of bags and pets and children, with no idea where they will sleep. But the influx of support for them from the Polish people means that most of their immediate needs are being met, at least for now. The new arrivals in Warsaw are typically greeted by volunteers who, within a few hours, match them with a family or hostel willing to house them. While they wait, they can visit stands that have been set up to distribute free Polish cellphone SIM cards (which are essential for people crossing borders who want to stay in touch with family), taxi vouchers, food for pets, professional counseling, and other services.

Top: A children’s play area at the Ptak Warsaw Expo’s refugee shelter. Bottom: The main hall at COS Torwar Arena, a sports venue now housing refugees. (Marcus Glahn for The Atlantic)

I visited a sports arena that had been retrofitted to accommodate up to 500 Ukrainian refugees. It had a day care staffed by volunteers and a cafeteria with a robust and varied buffet of hot meals, snacks, and beverages, as well as what was effectively a shopping mall full of free stuff: boxes of new socks; racks of jackets in all sizes; tall stacks of sheets, comforters, and towels; pajamas; shoes. The abundance was unlike anything I have seen while covering displaced people in the past. At camps alongside the U.S.-Mexico border, asylum seekers have at times lived for months exposed to the elements, with access only to a few reeking porta potties. Mothers have had to bathe their newborn babies with dirty water. Residents of these camps are routinely kidnapped and assaulted by gang members who control the surrounding area. Volunteer groups have organized for them to receive one or two meals a day—but at times, when funds run dry, there is no food at all. Though there is no such thing as a prototypical refugee experience, these conditions are much more common among displaced people.

[Caitlin Dickerson: What’s really happening at the border?]

According to the UNHCR, one in 97 people on the planet is currently displaced, including 35 million children. Nearly 90 percent of them live in developing countries. Ukraine is clearly one of the biggest displacement crises in the world, “but we should not forget that, still, displacement is primarily happening in the global South,” Andreas Kirchhof, the agency spokesperson, told me. “The world should definitely look at Ukraine, but should not forget Yemen, should not forget Congo, and should not forget Afghanistan and other major crises and the people who suffer from these crises.”

The war in Ukraine will help define our era, in that it represents a test of the principles of Western democracy. But it will also alter the trajectories, and immigration statuses, of millions of families for generations in ways that we can’t yet see. Being forced from one’s home causes irrevocable harm to anyone who experiences it, regardless of the kind of reception they meet in the places they land. Some find stability—and, if buffeted by the right passport, family connections, or luck, can even find greater prosperity. But that is no replacement for what they have lost. Far more displaced people, though, struggle to establish themselves in a new place, or find that they are unwelcome, so they have to keep moving in search of a new home.

This article appears in the June 2022 print edition with the headline “How Long Can This Go On?”

* This article has been updated to reflect the number of Ukrainians who were internally displaced and the number of Ukrainian refugees who had left the country as of late April.

Democrats’ Free Pass on Immigration Is Over

2021-09-25T06:00:00-04:00

Throughout the last administration, Department of Homeland Security officials at all levels—from Senate-confirmed power brokers in Washington to rank-and-file agents along the border—often complained that they were facing a double standard: They were doing the same work, using the same methods, as they had under previous presidents, they said, but because their boss was now Donald Trump, the public was quick to assume they were acting out of racism or malice.

At times, of course, Trump’s policies did break with those of previous administrations, including the zero-tolerance policy that separated thousands of migrant children from their parents. But in many ways, the DHS officials were right: Stories highlighting conditions and practices that predated the Trump presidency by years or even decades suddenly became front-page news. Reporters had doggedly covered those issues for years, but before Trump was inaugurated, their stories rarely generated any lasting national attention.

[Caitlin Dickerson: America never wanted the tired, poor, huddled masses]

Up until recently, the Biden administration seemed to have been banking on the persistence of this double standard, whereby the left-leaning parts of the public assume general goodwill on the part of Democratic politicians and therefore give them a pass. The administration has taken up court battles to protect some of Trump’s harshest asylum policies and commenced flying multiple planeloads of migrants back to Haiti. Now-viral images show that, in recent days, Border Patrol agents have been charging at—and in some cases verbally assaulting—Haitian migrants marooned at the Mexican border across from Del Rio, Texas.

But the assumption that these tactics would go unchallenged when deployed by a Democratic administration, as was often the case in the past, appears to have been a serious miscalculation. The spotlight that Trump shined on the southern border for four years is still plugged in. The public is still paying attention. And images that evoke the era of slavery—with fair-skinned men on horseback rushing Black migrants, whiplike reins flailing behind them—have added to a long-simmering push from the left to consider immigration policy not simply in terms of economics or national security, but also in terms of race.

Key allies of President Joe Biden are responding in ways that suggest the era of presumed goodwill may be over. The recent treatment of Haitians “turns your stomach,” Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, said this week in a speech on the Senate floor. “We cannot continue these hateful and xenophobic Trump policies that disregard our refugee laws.” Members of the Congressional Black Caucus were whisked to the White House for a meeting this week, and Al Sharpton, who traveled to the border recently, told The Washington Post that, like thus-far-unsuccessful efforts toward police reform, the treatment of Haitian migrants was an example of how Biden was failing Black Americans. Biden “said on election night: Black America, you had my back, I’ll have yours,” Sharpton said. “Well, we’re being stabbed in the back, Mr. President. We need you to stop the stabbing—from Haiti to Harlem.”

Belatedly realizing that the political climate seems to have changed, the Biden administration is now scrambling to do damage control. Vice President Kamala Harris called the images from Del Rio “deeply troubling.” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said he was “horrified,” and he suspended horse patrols there. The president himself said on Tuesday that the encounters were “dangerous” and “wrong,” and that “those people will pay.” All of this seems slightly disingenuous: As the administration well knows, Border Patrol agents have been policing on horseback for more than 100 years. And in this case, they were doing so under orders from their supervisors, who serve at the pleasure of the president. The scapegoating of rank-and-file agents will likely alienate a workforce that feels it was ordered to show force and then hung out to dry. Putting the focus on the horseback patrols also draws attention away from a larger issue: The administration has taken the legally dubious position of blocking most Haitian migrants from requesting asylum—and in this case, pushing them back onto the Mexican side of a dangerous river from which border agents often have to save people from drowning.

[Jonathan M. Katz: What happened when a nation erased birthright citizenship]

These events have stoked a broader conversation about race, not only because of the specifics of the encounters in Del Rio, but because of the way our current system is set up. One would be hard-pressed to imagine a scenario in which, following a coup or an earthquake in France, a large crowd of Parisians would show up in Matamoros, Mexico, and face the same treatment as the Haitians—because they would not be required to present themselves at the border in the first place. People from wealthy Western countries don’t need visas to come to the United States. For a few hundred dollars, they can simply hop on planes and enter the U.S. as tourists. Then, at some point on their “vacation,” they can show up at a government office and request asylum as part of a non-adversarial administrative process. Or they can simply stay in the U.S. illegally without seeking permission, as thousands of Western Europeans and Canadians do each year.

That experience is wholly unlike what an impoverished Haitian or Central American seeking asylum faces. Without a right to counsel, they must argue their case for safe haven in court, against a federal prosecutor whose job is to try to deport them and a judge who, like the prosecutor, works for the attorney general. Some of the asylum seekers are jailed during this process. Of those who are released, some choose to abandon the process and decide to continue living here illegally. But that’s only if they make it to the United States in the first place. Without access to tourist visas, the only way for poor people from poor countries to request asylum is to pay smugglers thousands of dollars, many of them using their life savings or going into debt, and hope that they survive the journey.

It is an irony worth noting that this flare-up along the border is occurring during a significant labor shortage. Despite our reflex to categorize migrants like the Haitians stuck in Texas as people in need of either safety or jobs, most want both. More specifically: Not everyone who comes to the United States for a job needs humanitarian protection, but everyone who comes for humanitarian protection needs a job. Yet our laws are so outdated and our elected officials so dependent on divisive talking points that we can’t figure out a lawful way to solve a problem that should be quite fixable.

The U.S. has a long history of singling out Haitians for exclusion. Throughout the Cold War, we welcomed hundreds of thousands of people fleeing communism in places such as Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, and China. But Haitians—who hailed from the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, which at the time was run by a pair of brutally violent, successive, father-and-son dictators—were for the most part denied such invitations. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed an agreement with the younger dictator, Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, giving the U.S. Coast Guard permission to board Haitian boats at random and question passengers in order to head off any approach of the United States. As Haiti deteriorated further amid a coup in 1991 that involved “disappearances, torture, rape and massacres,” according to the scholar A. Naomi Paik, President George H. W. Bush moved to interdict refugees who braved the Atlantic on rickety rafts, sending them to other impoverished parts of the Caribbean. Those countries—Belize, Honduras, Trinidad and Tobago—quickly became overwhelmed. Instead of relenting at that point, the Bush administration opened a camp in Guantánamo Bay to temporarily house Haitian asylum seekers. About 10,000 of them were paroled into the United States after passing an initial screening, but then, according to a Congressional Research Service report, “President Bush ordered the Coast Guard to intercept all Haitians in boats and immediately return them without interviews to determine whether they were at risk of persecution.”

[Read: When nativism becomes normal]

The targeting of Haitians for unusual stringency continued into the Clinton era. In 1997, Congress excluded Haitians from a bill to help Eastern Europeans and Central Americans who had been boxed out of asylum protections based on technicalities. (This prompted passage of the pointedly titled Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act the next year.) And in 2002, President George W. Bush’s Justice Department acknowledged that, without announcing a formal policy change, it had instructed regional offices in South Florida to change their parole criteria for Haitians specifically, the congressional report says. This quiet change required that Haitians remain jailed after they had successfully passed initial asylum screenings—even though other groups of migrants were freed after clearing that hurdle.

Presidents, both Democratic and Republican, have briefly enacted policies acknowledging that Haitians qualify for asylum or other forms of protection, only to revoke them soon after—sometimes within a few weeks—because too many Haitians were seen to be taking advantage of them. This whiplash has at times felt arbitrary or even cruel. For instance, after the 2010 earthquake that killed a quarter of a million people and nearly leveled Haiti’s capital, tens of thousands of Haitians were granted Temporary Protected Status, allowing them to live and work in the U.S. legally. Recent reporting suggests that most of the people who are now stalled at the American border also fled their country after the 2010 earthquake but stopped first in South America. They simply didn’t get here in time before the door slammed shut again.

The images captured by journalists at the border this week carry the weight of history. One shows a crying toddler with braided hair sitting on an adult male’s shoulders, tiny arms crossed and face scrunched with tears. The man grips the child fiercely as he wades through the neck-high waters of the Rio Grande, in which countless migrants have drowned. His face is set with the determination necessary to survive a system that was not created to help you.

The broader pressure that President Biden is facing to reckon with the racial overtones of America’s immigration policy may require an acknowledgment of that history, and of the searing pain this moment has caused for many Black and brown immigrants, their children, and their grandchildren. These photos from Del Rio haven’t cut fresh wounds. They’ve reopened old ones.

America Never Wanted the Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses

2021-04-05T06:00:00-04:00

Lucas Dörre

This article was published online on April 5, 2021.

When David Dorado Romo was a boy growing up in El Paso, Texas, his great-aunt Adela told him about the day the U.S. Border Patrol melted her favorite shoes. Romo’s aunt was Mexican and had a visa that allowed her to commute into South Texas for her job as a maid. Every week she had to report to a Border Patrol station, in accordance with a program that ran from 1917 into the 1930s requiring most Mexican immigrants to bathe in government offices before entering the United States. She would dress up in her nicest clothing, because those who looked dirty or were thought to have lice were bathed in a mixture of kerosene and vinegar. Years later, when Romo visited the National Archives outside Washington, D.C., he found photos and records of gas chambers where the belongings of the Mexican workers had been disinfected with the chemical Zyklon B, as well as a large steam dryer of the sort that had melted his aunt’s shoes. He discovered that a German scientist had taken note of the procedures being carried out at the American border and advocated for them to be implemented in Nazi concentration camps. Eventually, the Nazis increased the potency of Zyklon B in their gas chambers, and began using it on human beings.

Romo also learned that just as the bathing and gas-dousing program was winding down, the American government began using a different dangerous chemical to delouse Mexican immigrants: From the 1930s through the 1960s, border agents sprayed DDT onto the faces of more than 3 million guest workers as they crossed the southern border.

Romo was shocked that he hadn’t learned this earlier. He became a historian dedicated to exposing truths that have been buried along the borders. “We have deep amnesia in this country,” he told me when I spoke with him recently. “There’s a psychological process involved in forgetting that is shame from both sides—from both the perpetrator and the victim.”

This forgetting has allowed the racism woven into America’s immigration policies to stay submerged beneath the more idealistic vision of the country as “a nation of immigrants.” That vision has a basis in truth: We are a multiethnic, multiracial nation where millions of people have found safety, economic opportunity, and freedoms they may not have otherwise had. Yet racial stereotypes, rooted in eugenics, that portray people with dark skin and foreign passports as being inclined toward crime, poverty, and disease have been part of our immigration policies for so long that we mostly fail to see them. “It’s in our DNA,” Romo says. “It’s ingrained in the culture and in the laws that are produced by that culture.”

The first American immigration laws were written in order to keep the country white, a goal that was explicit in their text for more than 150 years. (Over time, the understanding of “whiteness” changed and expanded. Well into the 20th century, only those of Northern and Western European descent were considered white; Italians and Jews, for instance, were not.) Even after the laws were finally changed, allowing large numbers of immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa into the country starting in the 1960s, the eugenic ideas that supported earlier versions of them remained embedded in our society, and still provide the basis of many modern restrictions.

President Joe Biden’s immigration plan would make citizenship available to millions of unauthorized immigrants. Democratic members of Congress rallying behind it have said it would establish a more inherently American system, arguing implicitly that the Trump administration’s often overtly stated preference for white immigrants, or no immigrants at all, was an aberration from the past. “To fix our broken immigration system, we must pass reforms that reflect America’s values,” Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a co-sponsor of the proposed legislation, said in a statement introducing the bill. “For too long, our immigration system has failed to live up to the ideals and principles our nation was founded on,” said Senator Alex Padilla of California, another co-sponsor. But Donald Trump’s immigration agenda was executed without a single change to laws already passed by Congress, and his rhetoric and policies were consistent with most of American history. “The Trump era magnified the problem, but the template was there,” Rose Cuison-Villazor, a scholar of immigration law at Rutgers University, told me.

[Caitlin Dickerson: America’s immigration amnesia]

As the country moves forward from the past four years of harsh immigration policies, it must reckon with a history that stretches back much further, and that conflicts with one of the most frequently repeated American myths.

“This idea that somehow immigration was based on the principles stated on the Statue of Liberty? That never happened,” Romo said. “There has never been a color-blind immigration system. It’s always been about exclusion.”

Most American children are taught in school that the United States’ immigration policies help make the country special and, yes, great. A haven for outcasts who faced persecution in their home countries, the nation was founded, the story goes, on the principle of welcoming others who were treated similarly in their own homelands, with the idea that granting them individual rights and freedoms would allow distinct cultures and traditions to thrive together. This tale resonated in my own Central California school district, where I sat alongside classmates whose parents had come from Mexico, India, Laos, Vietnam.

But the cracks in that story began to show as soon as we hit the schoolyard, where kids of different backgrounds played together, but also hurled insults that stung because they had the weight of centuries of American law and rhetoric behind them.

When the Pilgrims crossed the ocean to settle in the New World, they brought with them ideas that would evolve into “manifest destiny,” which held that the United States was a land that had been bestowed by God on Anglo-Saxon white people. In 1790, the first American Congress made citizenship available only to any “free white person” who had been in the country for at least two years. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act blocked Chinese immigrants—and in 1917, it was expanded to block most Asians living between Afghanistan and the Pacific. These laws were upheld numerous times by federal courts, including in a seminal Supreme Court case from 1922, in which the government prevailed by arguing that citizenship should be granted as the Founders intended: “only to those whom they knew and regarded as worthy to share it with them, men of their own type, white men.”

In the early 20th century, the term progressive became synonymous with preserving or improving the racial “stock” of the country—and that meant keeping it white. Harry Laughlin, whose work would provide a model for Nazi Germany’s sterilization laws, served as the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization’s “expert eugenics agent.” In 1922, he presented evidence of the “hereditary feeble-mindedness” of nonwhite immigrants. Laughlin categorized the subjects of his research into overlapping subgroups that included “the criminalistic,” “the diseased,” and “the dependent.” Two years later, Congress passed the “progressive” Johnson-Reed Act, which established immigration quotas based on national origin. Adolf Hitler hailed the law as a model to emulate. “Compared to old Europe, which had lost an infinite amount of its best blood through war and emigration, the American nation appears as a young, racially select people,” he wrote.

Beginning during World War II, geopolitical and economic interests became important factors in the development of new immigration laws, but protecting the nation’s whiteness remained a priority.

The historic Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 did away with the quotas based on national origin and instead allowed citizens of the United States to petition for family members to join them. But the overtly race-blind language in the new system belied its intent. For his book Dividing Lines, Daniel Tichenor, a scholar at the University of Oregon, scrutinized the Congressional Record and found that legislators designed the system the way they did because they believed that people of European origin, who made up the majority of the population at the time, would also make up the majority of those petitioning to bring in new immigrants. In the 1980s, the so-called diversity-visa program was created to help the thousands of Irish immigrants who were coming into the country illegally each year enter instead as legal residents.

However, since 1965 the flow of immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa has, as ever, outpaced expectations—to the point where America is on track to become a majority-minority nation sometime in the next few decades. Various attempts have been made to acknowledge the enduring presence of immigrants of color by granting them legal status: In 1986, President Ronald Reagan ushered in an amnesty policy that allowed nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants, most of them Mexican, to become citizens. And in 1990, President George H. W. Bush amplified the demographic effects of the 1965 law by increasing the visa caps it had established. But by the time these efforts were made, racial tropes that had once painted Irish, Italians, and Chinese as unassimilable and prone to crime, poverty, and disease were already embedded in the nation’s culture, as well as in its laws.

[From the June 1896 issue: Restriction of immigration for “vast throngs of ignorant and brutalized peasantry”]

As a reporter covering these issues for the past several years, I have seen how discrimination against immigrants of color has been meted out not just in the ways the laws are written but in the ways they are enforced, sometimes as a consequence of policies not explicitly tied to race. For example, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, under pressure to carry out more deportations, have at times prioritized Mexicans over other groups of unauthorized immigrants, in part because Mexico doesn’t generally require American authorities to obtain travel documents for deportees before they can be returned. Mexicans are “easy to find, easy to remove,” Jim Rielly, a retired officer from the agency’s Chicago field office, told me. Rielly and several of his colleagues told me that the direction they would get from their superiors was “No OTMs”—the ICE acronym for “other than Mexicans.” They told me they knew of Chicago workplaces where ICE could have easily picked up large numbers of undocumented Irish or Polish immigrants, but none of them could recall that ever happening.

Previous iterations of racialized enforcement practices were more explicit, putting the power of government behind stereotypes. At various points, immigrant groups were associated with specific illnesses, resulting in enhanced screenings by American authorities that were degrading and unnecessary. “Even germs were ethnicized,” David Dorado Romo told me. “Middle Easterners were said to have this terribly frightening disease that was trachoma, which made you blind. The Jews were seen as people that carried tuberculosis; the Chinese had cholera.”

Well into the mid-20th century, while Mexicans were being bathed in kerosene, sprayed with DDT, and subjected to Jim Crow laws in the American South, Northern and Western European immigrants were being given periodic opportunities to legalize their immigration status. One such program, called pre-examination, allowed tens of thousands of Europeans to gain residency. Their descendants could then claim that their families had entered the United States the “right way,” as a means to argue for the exclusion of others who could not make the same case.

Mexicans were ultimately not eligible for these programs. Instead, their communities were policed with increasing ferocity. Mae Ngai, a historian at Columbia University, notes that in the 1920s, the earliest Border Patrol agents were instructed to act with civility toward white immigrants only. Within a decade or so of the agency’s establishment, its officers were apprehending nearly five times more people along the Mexican border than along the Canadian border. By the 1980s, when Mexicans made up just over half of the undocumented population, they accounted for nine out of 10 immigration arrests.

This overpolicing of Latinos and other nonwhite immigrants by federal authorities continues to the present day as a result of policies implemented by prior administrations—both Republican and Democratic. Collaboration between police and immigration authorities, which began under Bill Clinton and was expanded under Barack Obama, compounded the racial biases of each. Sheriffs began to campaign on platforms arguing that keeping communities safe meant ridding them of immigrants. The supposed relationship between immigrant and crime has become implanted in the national psyche, even though evidence consistently shows that U.S. residents born outside the country commit fewer crimes than the native-born.

Several of Jim Rielly’s colleagues told me that Latinos were more likely to be questioned and arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as during a workplace raid or street enforcement operation, whereas European immigrants were typically picked up only if they came onto the agency’s radar because of a serious criminal conviction. One former officer, Lorenzo Rivera, who was born in Mexico and worked in immigration for 30 years starting in 1986, told me he would often be asked to join in ICE’s workplace raids to help identify who was undocumented and who was not; he could distinguish among different groups of Latinos in ways that his white colleagues could not. He chafed, sometimes publicly, at what he called the “unwritten rule” that Mexicans should be singled out while European immigrants were effectively ignored. “I used to tell my supervisor, ‘You know, you’re basically profiling here.’ And he goes, ‘These are orders from Washington.’ ” Rivera suspected that the disparities he witnessed at work were due to more than just a difference in policy: “Most of the special agents were of European descent, and of course to them, going after one of their own—it was unheard of.”

The use of the phrase a nation of immigrants to describe America first appeared in the late 1890s, in the Congressional Record, according to Donna Gabaccia, a scholar at the University of Toronto. It was used only sparingly until the 1950s, when it was popularized during the movement to broaden the label of white to include a more diverse group of Europeans. Mae Ngai notes that in 1958 John F. Kennedy, himself the descendant of Irish immigrants, published a book called A Nation of Immigrants that included only two paragraphs on Asian and Latino immigration.

To call America a nation of immigrants is not wrong, either as a factual statement or an evocation of American myth. But that fact coexists with this one: Over the past century, the United States has deported more immigrants than it has allowed in. Since 1882, it has deported more than 57 million people, most of them Latino, according to Adam Goodman, a historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago. No other country has carried out this many deportations. This “challenges that simplistic notion of a long tradition where the United States has welcomed immigrants,” Goodman told me.

Moreover, though the United States accepts more immigrants each year than any other country, the percentage of its population that is foreign-born is lower than in countries like Norway, Gabon, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates—none of which considers itself “a nation of immigrants.”

There are legitimate debates to be had about how to balance economic, geopolitical, and humanitarian concerns in formulating immigration policy. But too often, such concerns have been invoked as euphemisms to disguise arguments that are really about race.

One of the most insidious consequences of stereotypes about immigrants is that they have been used to justify punishments that outweigh their transgressions. Undesirable immigrants were a “double debit” against society, Harry Laughlin, the eugenicist, told Congress in 1922. “Not only do the inadequates not pull their own weight in the boat but they require, for their care, the services of normal and socially valuable persons who could well be employed in more constructive work.” In the 1920s the label LPC—“liable to become a public charge”—was “shaken on deportation cases as though with a large pepper shaker,” a political scientist wrote at the time, in order to rationalize deporting people who had committed only minor criminal offenses or perceived moral transgressions, such as having a baby out of wedlock. For years before President Trump came along, tens of thousands of people without criminal records were being deported every year—many of them leaving behind children who were U.S. citizens—after they were caught living in the country without legal status, which is a civil infraction. During Trump’s term, more than 5,000 children were taken from their parents, many of whom had committed only the misdemeanor offense of crossing the border without documentation a single time.

In describing its own immigration plan as a racial-equity initiative, the Biden administration is nodding at a more complex view of our history. But opposition to the proposal, predictably, has echoed the past. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas called it “a disaster” that “does nothing to secure our borders, yet grants mass amnesty, welfare benefits … to over 11 million people.” On Fox News, Laura Ingraham said that Democrats pushing for the plan were “enticing illegals to bust through our borders, exploit our resources, and commit crimes.”

Once you begin to notice examples of how the past is still present, they become difficult to ignore. Trump enacted the most stringent border closure of his administration by citing the threat of disease, even though COVID‑19 outbreaks were far worse inside the United States than just outside its borders (in fact, Americans were actively deporting the virus abroad). His persistent blaming of the Chinese for outbreaks in the U.S. helped incite violence against Asian Americans that continues today, mirroring similar attacks from centuries past.

In moving toward the more inclusive system that some elected officials now say they want, the country would be not returning to traditional American values, but establishing new ones.

This article appears in the May 2021 print edition with the headline “‘It’s Always Been About Exclusion.’”

America’s Immigration Amnesia

2021-03-29T06:30:00-04:00

In the early 2000s, Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas were accustomed to encountering a few hundred children attempting to cross the American border alone each month. Some hoped to sneak into the country unnoticed; others readily presented themselves to officials in order to request asylum. The agents would transport the children, who were exhausted, dehydrated, and sometimes injured, to Border Patrol stations and book them into austere concrete holding cells. The facilities are notoriously cold, so agents would hand the children Mylar blankets to keep warm until federal workers could deliver them to child-welfare authorities.

But starting in 2012, the number of children arriving at the border crept up, first to about 1,000 a month, then 2,000, then 5,000. By the summer of 2014, federal officials were processing more than 8,000 children a month in that region alone, cramming them into the same cells that had previously held only a few dozen at a time, and that were not meant to hold children at all.

As the stations filled, the Obama administration scrambled to find a solution. The law required that the children be moved away from the border within 72 hours and placed in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, so they could be housed safely and comfortably until they were released to adults willing to sponsor them. But HHS facilities were also overflowing. The department signed new contracts for “emergency-influx shelters,” growing its capacity by thousands of beds within a matter of months. Government workers pulled 100-hour weeks to coordinate logistics. And then, seemingly overnight, border crossings began to drop precipitously. No one knew exactly why.

“The numbers are unpredictable,” Mark Weber, an HHS spokesperson, told me in 2016, just as another child-migration surge was beginning to crest. “We don’t know why a bunch of kids decided to come in 2014, or why they stopped coming in 2015. The thing we do know is these kids are trying to escape violence, gangs, economic instability. That’s a common theme. The numbers have changed over the years, but the themes stayed the same.”

[Adam Serwer: The real border crisis]

The cycle repeated itself under President Donald Trump in 2019, and is doing so again now. And as border crossings rise and the government rushes to open new emergency-influx shelters, some lawmakers and pundits are declaring that the Biden administration is responsible for the surge. “The #BidenBorderCrisis was caused by the message sent by his campaign & by the measures taken in the early days of his new administration,” Marco Rubio tweeted last week. The administration is “luring children to the border with the promise of letting them in,” Joe Scarborough, the Republican congressman turned cable-television host, told millions of viewers during a recent segment.

But for decades, most immigration experts have viewed border crossings not in terms of surges, but in terms of cycles that are affected by an array of factors. These include the cartels’ trafficking business, weather, and religious holidays as well as American politics—but perhaps most of all by conditions in the children’s home countries. A 2014 Congressional Research Service report found that young peoples’ “motives for migrating to the United States are often multifaceted and difficult to measure analytically,” and that “while the impacts of actual and perceived U.S. immigration policies have been widely debated, it remains unclear if, and how, specific immigration policies have motivated children to migrate to the United States.”

The report pointed out that special protections for children put into place under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 may have shifted migration patterns by encouraging parents to send their children alone rather than travel as a family. But it found that blaming any one administration for a rise in border crossings ultimately made no sense—the United States has offered some form of protection to people fleeing persecution since the 1940s, and those rights were expanded more than 40 years ago under the Refugee Act of 1980.

This is not to say that President Joe Biden’s stance on immigration—which has thus far been to discourage foreigners from crossing the border while also declaring that those who do so anyway will be treated humanely—has had no effect on the current trend. Like other business owners, professional human traffickers, known as coyotes, rely on marketing—and federal intelligence suggests that perceived windows of opportunity have been responsible for some of their most profitable years.

For example, border crossings rose in the months before President Trump took office in part because coyotes encouraged people to hurry into the United States before the start of the crackdown that Trump had promised during his campaign. With Trump out of office, some prospective migrants likely feel impelled to seek refuge now, before another election could restore his policies.

But placing blame for the recent increase in border crossings entirely on the current administration’s policies ignores the reality that the federal government has held more children in custody in the past than it is holding right now, and that border crossings have soared and then dropped many times over the decades, seemingly irrespective of who is president.

Given, then, that the movement of unaccompanied minors has long ebbed and flowed—we are now experiencing the fourth so-called surge over the course of three administrations—why do border facilities still appear overwhelmed? The answer, in part, is that the current uptick is simply getting more media attention. When Trump took office, in 2017, 13,000 children were sitting in Health and Human Services facilities, about 1,000 more than are in federal custody today; he did not receive any questions about the detention of migrants during his first press conference, and an online search did not turn up a single news story citing that statistic. The federal government, across multiple administrations, has also chosen not to meaningfully improve the conditions in border facilities: Children are still held in the same concrete cells that were used in the early 2000s, and the few larger facilities that the Department of Homeland Security has acquired since then to help expedite processing of children are just as austere as previous ones. They became infamous almost as soon as they opened, known as the places where children are held in what are effectively cages.

[Read: Family separation isn’t new]

As I’ve covered this issue over the years, federal authorities have often vented to me during cycle peaks, complaining that facilities built for law-enforcement purposes had been hijacked to shelter children. During one of the recent surges, a Customs and Border Protection commissioner lamented to me that offices at ports of entry along the border were being converted into nurseries with TVs playing cartoons, and that the agency was hemorrhaging money to keep up with the need for diapers, feminine products, and crackers and juice. When I asked him why CBP didn’t just build additional, more family-appropriate facilities, he replied that such a project could send a message that would encourage even more people to migrate to the United States.

With his comment, the commissioner reiterated what many other officials I’ve talked with over the years have said: The issue is not that the federal government is unable to handle the large numbers of children crossing the border now—rather, that it has been unwilling to spend the money required to process children more safely and comfortably, because of a concern about optics. But if, as the Congressional Research Service report concluded, American policies are not the primary driver of migration, then the federal government may be needlessly avoiding changes that could improve how the United States treats the most vulnerable migrants.

The current backup at the border stems from more than insufficient infrastructure. Most Central Americans hoping to escape crushing poverty, gang and gender-based violence, and the increasing ravages of climate change are not eligible to apply for any existing American visa. Under current immigration law, which dates back to 1954 and was last updated in 1996, the only legal route into the United States for most of them is via obtaining asylum. This requires getting in line behind literally more than 1 million other people, and waiting on an arcane, individualized legal proceeding that requires multiple appearances before a judge and takes, on average, more than a year to complete.

American asylum protections were first established as part of an effort to atone for the rejection of Jewish migrants who’d fled Nazi Germany during World War II, only to be turned away from American shores. The program was also seen as a tool for promoting democracy abroad, offering a haven to people escaping Communist governments during the Cold War. The messaging campaign worked. The United States became known, even more than before, as a place where people could find both freedom from persecution and material opportunity. The American economy has grown more robust with the addition of foreign workers, a trend that shows no sign of changing.

But current immigration law does not, for the most part, acknowledge that many beneficiaries of humanitarian protections also become students and low-wage workers, who are a major portion of the American economy and are consistently in short supply. Because of the demand, farmers in New York and restaurateurs in Miami poach undocumented workers from one another; without new immigrants, they say, their businesses would tank. Yet the law treats people who migrate for educational or financial gain and those who seek humanitarian protections as if they are separate populations, when that is often not the case. And because the rules generally require that people who apply to migrate for work or school be relatively wealthy, the Central American migrants crossing the border today, who are not, pursue the only legal route available to them—asylum.

“The asylum system isn’t the right path for most people, but it’s the only path,” a career government official who has served in the past three administrations recently told me.

[Juliette Kayyem: The border crisis Trump left behind]

Many of these migrants are genuinely escaping harrowing circumstances. The Congressional Research Service report found that almost all unaccompanied minors have experienced some form of gang violence, much of which fits the definition of torture. And in recent years, immigration judges have declared that people fleeing attacks based on their gender or sexual orientation should also qualify for asylum status in the United States. Last summer, when I traveled to a working-class suburb of Guatemala City, the deep poverty was immediately evident in the crumbling homes I entered, where multiple generations crammed together under only partial, if any, roofing. People I interviewed shared stories of recent murders in their neighborhoods as casually as if we were chatting about the weather.

But continuing to funnel hundreds of thousands of people a year through a broken, backlogged system does not appear to be working. The asylum process creates an incentive for people to exaggerate their stories, which harms the credibility of others’, and has resulted in people who needed protection being sent home to their death. The plodding asylum system, and the failure to acknowledge that its recipients are also part of the American economy, is the primary reason facilities along the border are full today, and will continue to get overloaded every time migration has one of its cyclical increases.

The Biden administration has begun to take steps to address this problem for young people by reintroducing the Central American Minors Program, which allows parents who are lawfully present in the United States to petition for their children to join them. But that program, created by President Barack Obama in 2014 and eliminated three years later by President Trump, has resettled only about 5,000 children, slightly more than half of the number who crossed the border just in the last month. Many of the children crossing the border now may not qualify, because they don’t have a parent already living in the United States.

The current fixation on whether the Biden administration will refer to what is happening at the border as a “crisis” reflects the general lack of perspective with which migration “surges” are generally treated. Moments at the border like this should by now be considered almost routine, but our collective short-term memory—sometimes exacerbated by media hyperbole—allows elected officials to capitalize on them for their own political gain. This misleading of the public also helps Congress dodge accountability for its role in retaining a system that has been outdated for decades. Every time migration spikes, federal officials must abandon their primary work to demand billions of dollars in emergency funds, in order to respond to events that were foreseeable.

In the past decade, Americans have come to take for granted that Congress is too divided to pass any meaningful legislation—but that forgone conclusion could be revisited. Setting immigration policy is a congressional responsibility. In recent years, when Barack Obama and Donald Trump each attempted to take control of the issue from the legislative branch, they ended up in court, facing state governments accusing them of executive overreach. Such presidential efforts amount to mere stop-gap measures, which inevitably give way and allow the cycle to continue.

Caitlin Dickerson | The Atlantic

I Recognize the Look on Liam Ramos’s Face

‘America Doesn’t Want My Children or Grandchildren’

How ICE Lost Its Guardrails

Hundreds of Thousands of Anonymous Deportees

‘It’s Never Been This Bad’

ICE’s Mind-Bogglingly Massive Blank Check

They Never Thought Trump Would Have Them Deported

Lies About Immigration Help No One

Setenta millas en el infierno

Seventy Miles in Hell

There’s No Such Thing as a Border Czar

Celine Dion May Never Perform Again

‘I Am Pleasing to Everyone’

The ‘Permanently Orphaned’

The Specter of Family Separation

Radio Atlantic: How Germany Remembers the Holocaust

The Family-Separation Files

Initial Separations (Pilot Programs)

Deliberations Leading Up to the Implementation of Zero Tolerance

Zero Tolerance Policy

Zero Tolerance Charts

Misleading the Public

Investigations by Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL)

Problems With Family Reunification and Attempts to Thwart It

Known Instances of Separation

Collections

Further Reading

Congressional Reports

Inspector General Reports

Department of Justice

Department of Health and Human Services

Department of Homeland Security and Components

Congress Can’t Even Do This One Thing

I Didn’t Want My Children to Know—And Then I Did

An American Catastrophe

The Dawn of Zero Tolerance

The C-Team Assembles

(November 2016–January 2017)

The Pilot

(March–November 2017)

Ignoring the Warnings

(July–December 2017)

Ambient Ignorance

(December 2017–May 2018)

Implementation

(May–June 2018)

Reunification

The Aftermath

Una catástrofe estadounidense

El amanecer de la Tolerancia Cero

El equipo C se reúne

El piloto

Ignorar las advertencias

Ignorancia ambiental

Implementación

Reencuentro

Las consecuencias

‘You Cannot Host Guests Forever’

Democrats’ Free Pass on Immigration Is Over

America Never Wanted the Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses

America’s Immigration Amnesia